


Sanzo vs the Alien Invasion

by Vathara



Series: Project Tatterdemalion [4]
Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alien Invasion, Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Cuddling & Snuggling, Genetic Engineering, No Tentacle Sex, Platonic Cuddling, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-09-01 23:22:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8642248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vathara/pseuds/Vathara
Summary: Meanwhile, on the other end of the known human universe.... AKA Hollows aren't all one race. And things get dicey. But the aliens made one mistake: They annoyed Genjyo Sanzo.





	1. Fearless Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another fic I hope to get to in more detail after NaNo. But this chapter works, so. :)
> 
> Note, while this is in the Project Tatterdemalion universe, it's far enough away that our poor shinigami haven't heard about this mess. And won't, for quite some time....

The gunfire had stopped. The sutra wasn’t humming anymore.

And maybe most important of all, his robes had finally shed the last telltale drops of blood and mended themselves. Not a trace of clawmarks remained.

 _Take things slow_ , Genjyo Sanzo warned himself, settling his living bundle more firmly in his right arm. His left might need to be busy. Shooting. _Damn poison’s not all out, even if the sutra did swat… whatever contagion came with the claws_.

Behind him in the monastery strongroom, one of the surviving monks shivered.

“Finger _off_ the trigger, if you’re going to get the shakes.” Sanzo tried not to growl. Anyone who’d managed to stay alive this night would probably shoot at him. Not that the twisted things that had attacked them had growled; at least, not in a way human ears could hear. “I’m opening the door.”

Head priest Nishimoya scowled down at his persacomm. “Captain Taikei still says we should remain where we are until he’s confirmed all the shikigami are dealt with-”

“Stay if you want,” Sanzo cut him off. He had a living victim to take care of, and a sutra muttering in the back of his head with icy curiosity about : _DNA not previously encountered – not Shangri-La/Terran/known Confederacy construct. Further analysis required_.: “I’m leaving.”

 _The sutra will let me know if there are more of those things out there. I think_.

: _Analysis of unknown biologic pulse-communications still in progress_.:

And it was sheer will and guts that kept Sanzo’s stride even, because the concept the sutra tried to fry into his brain wasn’t nearly as simple as ‘pulse’. It was a spiky combination of EM projection, telempathic elements, distortion of space-time like rippling water, ripple-bounces as _I am here, I-am, you-are-other, you-are-prey_....

 _Damn it, ease up!_ Sanzo snarled silently at alien tech that both was and wasn’t a sacred scroll of paper. _Just warn me if you sense it. The damn things want to_ eat us. _I don’t need to know what they’re saying_.

Ancient amusement. A sense of a tickling prickle; like a kitten’s whiskers brushing his face, next to the monsters’ spine-freezing screams.

 _The kid. Has to be_. “Whatever you’re doing, better pull it in and be quiet,” Sanzo murmured to the bundle leaning on his shoulder. “I don’t know who this Captain Taikei is, but I know Confederacy shikigami, and what hit us wasn’t them. If they’re lying about that, I’m not going to believe them about anything.”

A quiet breath near his ear, and the kid played possum, limp and still; wrapped up in an acolyte’s oversized robe so anyone looking couldn’t see more than the rough outline of legs, arms, head.

 _They’d better not see more than that_.

Sanzo wiped that thought from his face and mind. He had a hurt kid in his arms, they were walking past twisted bodies in pools of blood soaking the temple’s wooden floor, and here came a rattling pack of soldiers in combat armor and nightvision helmets, armed to the teeth, scattering through the open space as if they meant to catch any suddenly resurrected bodies in a withering crossfire.

Which showed that somebody in charge had more survival instincts than your average lemming. The near-invisible _akuma_ had played dead a time or two. Only the sutra had caught the whispers of whatever the creatures used to pulse-sense around them, and Sanzo had put them down with a psychokinetically charged bullet to the head. Not a trick he usually dared to pull out. Everyone knew Quincies were a Federation gene-line. And his records - accurately - showed he didn’t have relatives back in the Federation. Which would have made explanations very tricky.

“Halt and identify yourself!”

 _Never explain anything_. Sanzo halted, feeling one of the trembling monks run into him from behind, and stood his ground. “Do I look like I need identification, soldier?”

Another of the armed men stiffened. “Sir....”

The rifle came up to aim. “I said-”

“Captain Taikei!” the evident second in command hissed. “That’s a Sanzo!”

 _Damn it_.

On the one hand, that ought to stop most of the questions. On the other - so much for getting out of here unnoticed.

 _Don’t lose the momentum_. “Genjyo Sanzo,” he announced, sweeping his gaze over all the soldiers before settling back on Captain Taikei. The man’s helmet visor hid most of his face; the bit Sanzo could see of his mouth was a hard line of lips, like a man determined not to flinch from fire. “These are the survivors of - Momijizan.” He’d almost said _Kinzan_ , damn it. And this wasn’t anything like the shikigami attack that had killed Master Koumyou.

Except for the bodies. And the blood.

Deliberately, Sanzo pushed those memories away. Three months. It’d been three months since he’d given his master’s body to cremating flames, and he would not cry. There were lives counting on him. One life in particular, squirming a little against his shoulder. Someone the size of a twelve-year-old in that position probably wasn’t having a good time.

The twitch drew a half-dozen weapons aimed his way. Morons. “What the hell is that?” one of the twitchier shouted.

Priest Nishimoya cleared his throat. “Um, we’re not-”

“An orphan recently remanded to the temple’s care,” Sanzo cut across his words. “I claim Privacy on his behalf.”

That got half the weapons re-aimed elsewhere. Good.

Captain Taikei was made of sterner stuff, though. “You’ll have to wait for the medics like everyone else. Get in line-”

“Captain!” the second in command hissed again.

Taikei’s mouth thinned. “What is it now, Ozeki?”

“None of the men is going to touch a Sanzo, sir!”

Sanzo kept his face impassive, as if he’d heard nothing. However else his unknown parents might have meddled with his genome, at least he’d come out with good ears.

Taikei’s annoyance was almost palpable, like sticking a hand into clammy ground meat. “Backwater superstitions....”

“He’s in white robes,” Ozeki pointed out, voice still low. “And the kid’s are clean, too. If they’d been hit, we’d see it.”

 _You just keep thinking that_.

Taikei’s jaw worked, not so different from the sawing motion Sanzo had seen one of the akuma use to dismember a still-shrieking meal. “Sorry, Priest Sanzo,” the captain stated, loud enough for the room to hear. “You may have heard that Confederacy creations are sometimes gengineered to carry contagions. We believe this batch can inflict a particularly virulent form of Strickland’s.”

Not a twitch of face or voice to hint otherwise. Meaning the man was a good liar, or his superiors were pulling the wool over his eyes, too. Either way, it was past time to get the hell out of here.

Inclining his head in the gracious nod most expected from a high-ranking priest, Sanzo stalked past the armed men and out into the night.

 _Strickland’s my ass. That’s a damn fungus. This was a virus. I think_.

Way, way too fast-moving to be any ordinary virus. The sutra had grumbled about neurotoxins, started countermeasures, tried to take its usual minute to do a casual analysis of the latest contagion to attempt to inconvenience its bearer-

Only to release the closest thing Sanzo had ever felt to an unholy squawk in his brain, as it detected the virus actually _warping the spacetime continuum_ to start appearing in cells across its bearer’s body; a wave of infection that wasn’t bothering to resort to anything as plebian as an incubation period.

The next few seconds after that had been a frightening white-out of sense and thought. Sanzo had come to in a swarm of writhing bodies, pulling the trigger again and again, headache jangling as the sutra snarled through his reflexes like a furious dragon. : _Kill! Kill! Kill!_ :

He still didn’t know what the sutra had done. He thought it’d wrapped him in itself, and released a short - hopefully controlled - burst of the same energy it used to fry Confederacy shikigami from the inside out. He hadn’t exactly had the chance to ask the other monks. They’d been too busy surviving. And the Maten itself had been growling about : _Analysis continuing_ : and : _Preliminary countermeasures in place. Destroy carriers. Avoid further exposure_.:

Avoiding further exposure sounded like an excellent idea. The neurotoxin hurt. A lot.

 _Someone gets hit with this akuma of a virus - if you couldn’t counter it inside an hour, there wouldn’t be any human cells left to save_.

Which made Sanzo almost break into a cold sweat as the kid shifted in his grasp, obviously trying to listen to what was going on as they walked out into a _snap_ of annoying floodlights. Sanzo squinted against the brilliance, never slowing his pace toward the half-circle of gunpowder and steel cutting off the one road leading up to this isolated monastery. Armed soldiers, suited medics, biohazard trucks-

 _Oh. Grenade launchers. Fun_.

And there were a few things in amongst the trucks he didn’t even recognize. This was _not_ the normal response to a landing of Confederacy monsters.

 _You have a kid. You claimed Privacy. Don’t think about anything else_.

Face set, Sanzo stalked toward the barricade.

 _Heh. Watch them sweat_.

He could almost see the thoughts playing over helmeted faces. On the one hand, no soldiers with him, which implied he was walking out of what was apparently a quarantine zone without official permission. On the other hand, no soldiers with him - which meant did they really want to try and stop him?

 _Hell, what do I do if they do? One revolver against a bunch of guys in armor and APCs_ -

The Maten rustled on his shoulders, cranky as he’d ever felt the alien tech. : _Offensive and defensive options prepared._ :

Through the cool flow of calculations, Sanzo felt the hope that he opted for attack.

 _I guess even an AI can get snarly_.

: _Analysis of unknown biologic still in progress_.:

Oh yes. A cranky, _cranky_ sutra, indeed. He wondered how long it’d taken Kanzeon’s world-shaping tech to analyze Terran DNA, when the first settlers had landed generations ago.

: _Terran DNA/ecosystem analysis will need recalibration given new complicating factors_ ,: the Maten growled.

_Wait. Wait wait wait. You think this thing is going to get loose?_

: _Analysis of young unknown biologic still in progress_.:

Great. And what would the Maten decide about the kid after the analysis was over?

: _Offensive and defensive options available._ :

Right. Because whatever the sutra might decide was the best option, it didn’t act on its own. Unless its bearer was in deadly danger, and for some reason not capable of choosing to command it.

 _Why didn’t Koumyou_ -

Sanzo wiped that thought from face and mind as he neared the barricade. And didn’t slow down. Dark hair and a white labcoat had caught his eye, and he did not want to deal with what they implied.

_Why is one of the government’s black ops gengineers hanging around an alien invasion?_

He could think of a host of reasons. Especially given the little chip he’d taken out of the back of the kid’s neck, and dropped into a torn-open monster’s stomach.

Which made him _angry_ , and for once he wasn’t going to throttle it back. Sanzo narrowed his eyes, headed straight for the center of the barricade and one shaking soldier, and didn’t stop.

Guns melted out of the way.

 _Keep moving. Don’t stop. Walk like you’re going to walk all the way back to town_.

Which, given what he knew about neurotoxins in general, stood a fifty-fifty chance of actually being a good idea. As long as there wasn’t any more venom circulating in his system, the longer he kept moving the more chance his body had to sweat it out.

On the other hand, the longer he kept moving, the more chance his wounds had of opening up again. And if the people behind him saw him bleed through the robes... it wouldn’t be good.

“Hey....” Came the casual drawl behind them. “I didn’t get your name.”

Sanzo kept walking. “Don’t move,” he whispered to the suddenly tense bundle on his shoulder. “Do _not_ move. There are too damn many of them. I didn’t haul you out of there just to get us both shot.”

The kid was trembling. That : _kitten-prickling_ : was back, and fiercer.

“And tone that down,” Sanzo hissed. “They’re looking for you. Think they can’t detect that?”

The prickling cut off, like eyelids slammed closed. Good.

“Still didn’t get your name!” rang out behind them.

Sanzo shifted his kid-bundle from shoulder to shoulder, and held up his right hand in the _abhayamudrā_.

“Cute. Well, there’s only five Sanzos around. I’m sure I’ll get the name of the one who tamed the demon elephant.”

 _He probably will, too. Not good_.

One problem at a time. First to get out of sight of this apparently super-secret mess. Then....

 _I need to call a cab_.

* * *

Sanzo unlocked the second of the five hotel rooms he’d rented via persacomm and the planetary ‘Net, and hoped he’d been paranoid enough.

 _No one lying in wait. Guess that’s as much as I can ask_.

There were bags and bundles, though; some with the soft slump of civilian clothes, others with green and pizza-sauce scents that meant they ought to be the food he’d ordered.

 _Need to hole up and heal up for a day or so. Both of us_. “I’m going to put you down, now.” Sanzo kept his voice quiet; he didn’t do gentle. “If you want to eat first, we can. But I think I’m going to fall over after I eat, so I was planning on a shower. Blood itches when it dries.”

The kid wobbled as he stood. Maybe from hunger. Maybe....

_How long has it been since he stood on two legs?_

“Sh-shower...?”

 _Oh good, he can talk_. “Come on. I want hot water. And soap.”

The acolyte’s robe was definitely a loss, covered on the inside with bits of dead skin and who knew what else. Sanzo planned to burn it. Just in case. The kid wrapped inside....

 _Well. I think he’s a kid_.

Sanzo deliberately did not stare, helping the kid scrub off knobby knees, clawed hands, and plush-furred gold-brown tentacles. He made a point of washing behind pointed ears.

For his part the kid was staring right back, slit-pupiled eyes wide at the range of scrapes, scars, and gashes Sanzo’d collected in fights from years back to just hours ago. “Are you- did I do that?”

“Are you kidding?” Sanzo said dryly. “Shrimp your size? You barely nicked me. Here. Hold still.” He parted brown strands that weren’t quite hair, checked the back of the kid’s neck. “Good, looks like that’s scabbed over. Try to keep it dry for a few days.”

Those gold eyes went even wider. “...You took it out.”

“Of course I took it out,” Sanzo bit out, wrapping the kid in a dun towel. “You don’t chip-tag _people_.”

Huh. That got quiet again. Was that good or not?

There was a gurgling growl.

Sanzo eyed the kid’s stomach, and let his lips turn up a little. “Come on. Trying not to die always makes me hungry.”

Two pizzas and an amazing amount of fruit later, and the kid was a sleepy lump in his new dark red shirt and jeans. The Chinese-style laced shirt left room for his tentacles to slip in and out under the back, and clawed toes curled up happily against sandal thongs. Sanzo had debated socks, and decided they could wait for later.

Gnawing on a bit of crust, Sanzo scowled, poking at memories of blood and death for _facts_ , not emotions. _Okay, what have we got? It’s nothing the sutra’s met before. It’s infectious. Looks like it kills some people, but others_....

Okay, maybe he wasn’t quite the hardcase he wanted people to think, because the thought that those monsters he’d cut down - the ones trying to eat the whole monastery - had once been human-

A furry lump slumped against his right side, one tentacle reaching out to curl loosely around his waist.

Sanzo glanced that way, and carefully put his own hand on the kid’s shoulder. _Like a baby monkey tail. Only more teeth_. “So.” Damn it, he was no good at this. “You want to sleep, or you want to talk? And what’s your name? I can’t keep calling you _kid_. Eventually you’d grow out of it.”

“...Specimen Nine.”

Okay, had he said he hated this whole situation? Because he did. So much. “That’s not a name.”

“S’ the only one I remember.” The kid nestled against his side, seeking warmth. “That guy. Who talked to you. S’what he called me. I think. Voices... sound different now.”

“That’s not a name,” Sanzo said flatly. A government gengineer making a kid not human anymore? Whatever was going on, he was going to get to the bottom of it. And burn it to the ground. “You need a name.”

Gold blinked up at him, a spark of defiance. “So give me one.”

Sanzo stilled. Because on one level this was a kid; he could see it in the half-defensive stance, hear it in the hopeful voice. On another, this was something not at all in the world he knew - claws and fangs and venom, and way too strong to be human-

_“...I’ll get the name of the one who tamed the demon elephant.”_

No. Not a demon elephant. A demon monkey.

“Goku,” Sanzo said, determined, eyeing the peach pits left in the dinner wreckage. “Son Goku, the Monkey King.” He tapped his own chest, where he’d put his black armor shirt back on over his bandages. “I’m Genjyo Sanzo. Glad to see you pulled out of the whole hissing, eating people headspace before I had to shoot you.”

Gold eyes widened. A determined chin lifted. “So why didn’t you shoot me?”

 _Good question_.

The golden shimmer and slit pupils were the same. Everything else was different. The - _thing_ \- Goku had been before the sutra grabbed him had been four-legged, with a mouth full of fangs and slick skin shifting colors to blend with night and shadows and blood. Tentacles, razor claws - the only obvious difference between Goku and the other akuma had been size.

 _That wasn’t what stopped me_. “You were between the man-eaters and the kid acolytes,” Sanzo stated. “You weren’t trying to hurt people. You were trying to protect them.”

“I was?” Goku curled his fingers, staring at the bone-white claws that slid out of his fingertips. “It’s all kind of fuzzy. I just remember... they were scared. I didn’t want people scared of me. I wanted....”

He didn’t even see the kid move. Goku was just suddenly there, head pressed against his chest, short brown hair-tendrils tickling the side of Sanzo’s throat. Tentacles were wrapped around him like rose-vines, as the kid took a deep breath and sighed. “I like your heartbeat.”

“It’s preferable to not having one,” Sanzo said dryly. If the kid were a constricting snake he’d be in trouble. But so far all Goku seemed to want to do was hang on.

 _So far_. “Ground rules, monkey.” Sanzo gripped smaller fingers, eyeing the fine points of razor-white as the sutra whispered in his mind. “First rule. You’re better, but you’re still dangerous. Don’t claw anything unless you intend to kill it. And don’t claw _anyone_. If they need to die, I’ll shoot them. It’s kinder.”

Goku started, head lifting off his chest. “You mean, even after you fixed me, I could still....”

“Infect people, like those akuma did?” Sanzo said bluntly. “Better assume you can, until we find out otherwise. The consequences if we don’t and we’re wrong are horrible.”

Goku gulped. “But you’re not scared of me.”

Annoyed, yes. Scared? Never. “I’ve got an edge most people never will.”

Goku blinked. Reached up a hand, and touched the sutra. “Oh. It’s all prickly.”

Which was the sutra going _poke_ , and Sanzo could only hope it was a nonhostile scan of energies and not something nastier.

: _Offensive options only deployed voluntarily so long as bearer Genjyo Sanzo conscious and aware_.:

 _So you say_. If he’d had any idea he was going to end up with an alien supercomputer poking around inside his head, he’d have dropped his damn frontier-scout curiosity about the sutras like a hot rock, and never have gotten close enough to Koumyou to get tagged as his heir.

: _Terrans alien to Shangri-La_.: Cool calculations had a mint-taste of amusement. : _Native supercomputer_.:

A _wiseass_ alien supercomputer. Because obviously, poking bits of an alien planet’s ecosystem so other people could find out how not to _die horribly_ gave you terrible karma.

“So what is it?” Goku was eyeing green-edged white paper with obvious suspicion. Which showed the kid was smarter than the average priest. “How’d you save me?”

 _Good question_. Sanzo remembered dumping spent brass, reloading as fast as human fingers could manage, seeing the smaller monster tense to spring and adrenaline-shaking monks leveling shotguns at movement-

Most of the priests probably would have called it holy compassion. Idiots. Being a Sanzo had nothing to do with it. Half his life and more he’d been a Scout and territory-opener on Shangri-La’s vast western frontier. And the first rule of a Scout was _never shoot a nonhostile unknown_.

Because it might have friends. And brains. And the ability to hold a grudge. He’d nearly gotten himself trampled to death by a bunch of angry monocorn stallions once. Shoot a creature that wasn’t edible and wasn’t trying to kill him? No, thank you.

So he’d stepped in the way. The same as he would have for a spider-bear, or a water-cougar; shoulders prickling with the knowledge of idiots’ fingers on triggers and his own revolver ready to snap up and fire.

: _Quick analysis complete_ ,: the sutra had announced. : _Human DNA identified. Additional nonhostile option possible_.:

The image and shape of that option had been too incredible to believe. So Sanzo hadn’t tried. He’d just stepped into the little monster’s leap, and prayed, gathering will and power to unleash-

_“Makai Tenjyo!”_

He might never understand everything the sutra was. But Koumyou had carried it years longer, and taught him all he could believe.

 _The Maten is meant to break the darkness_.

“I’m not sure what I did,” Sanzo admitted now, meeting that gold gaze. “You acted more like a person than a monster. So I - broke the monster.”

“And my, what a shattering that was,” a familiar voice chuckled. Contralto, counter-tenor; most people would have struggled to place it as one or the other, before looking at the generous bosom under translucent silks and deciding on _she_.

Sanzo had met this most sketchy of goddesses before, and he knew se was no such thing. “Kanzeon Bosatsu.” If one of Shangri-La’s mysterious native sentient species wanted to call hirself that, it was no skin off Sanzo’s nose. Se was far more merciful than any other gods he’d dealt with. “What kind of alien hell cut loose tonight?”

“I have no idea. Except that whatever it was, both of us agree it’s alien. That doesn’t happen much.” Ringlets of dark hair brushed hir pale shoulders as se peered at Goku. “So you’re Son Goku now? You can call me Aunt Kanzeon, since you’re going to be looking after my Sanzo for me.”

“ _Who_ is going to be looking after who?” Sanzo said dryly.

Goku was smiling, slit pupils relaxing into something more round and friendly as he sniffed the air around hir. “You want me to take care of Sanzo? Sure!”

“Who was the actual Scout in this room, hag?” Sanzo growled. “I can take care of myself.”

“And yet, you almost didn’t,” Kanzeon observed. “That was a very interesting distress call.”

He’d just bet it had been. Most of the time Sanzo tried to ignore the fact that the sutras served Kanzeon’s people as mobile information sensors. Right now, he’d take all the information he could get. “I’m trying to decide if that was a weapon, a contagion, or something else I haven’t thought of yet.”

“You always were the suspicious sort,” Kanzeon mused. “Most of the time it’s just cute. Right now... I have to admit I’m worried.”

Goku was looking between them, frowning. “How can monsters be a weapon?”

Sanzo blinked. Tried to cudgel a brain coming down from adrenaline crash and food into rational thought. “Did you get any schooling?”

Thin shoulders trembled under red cloth. “I don’t _know_.”

“Probably wouldn’t help if you had,” Sanzo shrugged. “Most people who’ve crossed paths with a shikigami close enough to observe them end up dead.” He opened photos on his persacomm, holding it so Goku could see the screen. “These are shikigami.”

Goku looked over the variety of monstrous forms; some alive, most dead, a myriad shapes from crabs the size of a car to thirty-foot saw-toothed Komodo dragons to a swarm of ferret-sized creatures that were almost all teeth. “All of them?”

“Those, and more,” Sanzo affirmed. “Sometimes other crazy idiots make genetic chimeras, but the Confederacy’s got it down to a science. They make gengineered creatures - people here call them shikigami - for all kinds of reasons. Terraforming. Pets. Blood sports.” He paused. “And terror weapons.”

“It’s an interesting twist on human ethics and cost-benefit analysis,” Kanzeon reflected. “Let loose an effective virus, and it can be indiscriminately spread back to your own people. Set loose a monster to hunt in the dark, or even attack in broad daylight - the overall number of deaths will be small, but the disruption to everyday life and society can be huge. And it’s unlikely to get flung back in your face.”

“Disruption is relative,” Sanzo said wryly. “Loosing shikigami on a sparsely-settled planet like Shangri-La... on the one hand, it’s easy. A gutsy space hauler can set down a needle-nose just about anywhere in the deep wilderness, and nobody might know. On the other hand, Shangri-La’s got a lot of wilderness. Which means a lot of people have guns, and the skills to use them. A shikigami can do a lot of damage _for a while_. But man-eating monsters don’t scare us the way they’d scare idiots in a New Terran shopping mall. We count the bodies, pull together a posse, track it, and take it down.” He leaned back. “Got that?”

Goku frowned. Looked between them, face questioning. “So… some people you really don’t like make monsters, and sometimes they dump monsters on other people to eat them, only here that doesn’t work because you get grumpy and shoot back?”

That was a giggle, coming from behind Kanzeon’s delicate hand. A definite giggle.

“And this is why I don’t raise kids,” Sanzo ground out. “Did you get any of that?”

“Sure!” Goku nodded eagerly. “Man-eating monsters.”

Sanzo blinked. Tried not to wince.

“Oh, I can’t wait to see you explain shopping malls,” Kanzeon chuckled.

 _I’m in hell_.

* * *

The kami had giggled hir way out of Sanzo’s room eventually, the flux of there-and-gone that marked a teleport tickling his brain through the sutra. Finally.

Though se had taken Goku’s discarded robe with hir for further analysis. And offered to ward the room with a “Don’t look here” for the next twenty-four hours. Sanzo hadn’t been too proud to accept. Goku needed the rest. Hell, he needed the rest.

So of course, he was staring at a dim gray ceiling in the dark. Made perfect sense.

 _I saved everybody I could. The authorities can handle the rest. Or cover it up, who knows? But Goku_....

_No one else is going to give the kid a chance. He’s alien. Creepy. Dangerous._

_...He’s a kid who tried to save people, even when he was half out of his head. I’m not leaving him to idiots who see claws and start screaming_.

Which still didn’t tell him what he should do. Because Goku was a kid. And nobody with any sense would let a feral Scout turned no less feral Sanzo raise children-

: _Call_.:

Sanzo lifted his will and a hand in the dark, still not quite used to the whisper of : _satisfaction_ : and : _patience with young bearer_ : that fluttered to him with the alien scroll. Paper coiled around his kote-sleeved arm, warm and cold as standing in the sun on a winter’s day; then snaked its way up to his shoulder.

 _What’s wrong?_ Sanzo thought at the Maten. _Usually you let me alone to sleep_.

: _Patience_.:

The side of his bed dipped.

Sanzo held very still as a tentacled kid wormed under his covers, settling against his back with a sleepy sigh. _Damn it_.

: _Maten presence reasonable precaution_ ,: the sutra smirked.

In case the kid _clawed him in his sleep_. Oh, wonderful.

 _I should kick him out onto the floor. Would serve him right_ -

There was a vibration against his back. Like... purring.

 _On the exhale. Like a direcat, or a Terran tiger_ , Sanzo thought. _Sleeping with him isn’t safe_.

Not because Sanzo thought the kid would lose it. If Goku hadn’t freaked out about Kanzeon or not-a-monster-anymore, he doubted the demon monkey would flip out waking up in bed with a guy still wearing his light armor, for gods’ sakes.

No. The reason it wasn’t safe was the same reason he was wearing synthspider cloth to sleep in. He had nightmares. Lousy, annoying, shake him out of bed with a gun in hand nightmares. And if he pointed a gun at the kid, nightmare or not, Goku would have every right to claw him in self-defense.

 _Step on a scorpion, get stung. Law of nature_.

: _Meditative trance technique recommended_.:

 _Sure, I can meditate myself to sleep_. Sanzo did his best not to snark at the sutra. It was trying to help. _Won’t help when I half-wake up and don’t know where I am_ -

: _Sleep/wake cycle stage detectable. Aural scan can be set accordingly_.:

Sanzo blinked in the darkness. Took a slow, measured breath, and released it, probing the images offered with what he knew. _You can set off an aural scan whenever I’m waking up. So I know what’s around me?_

: _Inherent capability present in bearer_ ,: the sutra observed. : _Trainable_.:

 _Were you this snarky with Koumyou- No, I don’t want to know_ , Sanzo sighed, as tentacles wriggled closer like a purring octopus. _Just show me the technique- ow!_

It was like being attacked by a furry strip of velcro. It didn’t make any headway against his armor, but various bits of tentacles had wrapped around the bare skin of his shoulders and upper neck, and those prickled, sharp as any nettle-ivy stinging hairs.

Only it didn’t burn. It seemed to be soothing.

 _Hell. Not good_ -

: _Compounds harmless to human biology_.:

Sanzo scowled. _You’ve got a pretty wide definition of “harmless”_.

: _Preliminary observation indicates young biologic Goku appears relaxed and unthreatened_.:

And a venomous creature that didn’t feel in danger wasn’t going to waste precious venom lightly. So it probably wasn’t meant to be toxic. Still. _I don’t like strange chemicals in my system_.

: _If bearer will be continuing association with Goku, more encounters likely. Building up system tolerance advised_.:

Grrr. _You’re sure it’s not toxic?_

: _Harmless to human biology. Observing bearer in case gengineered “quirks” provoke unexpected response. Detoxification protocol at emergency readiness_.:

Right. Because he could pass a cursory gene-screening if nobody looked too hard, but once he’d figured out the files his biological parents had left hidden in the rosary beads, he’d never dared let anyone probe deeper.

 _Why the hell did Confederacy scientists dump their kid on a_ Satrapy _world?_

He didn’t know. He probably never would. He’d decided a long time ago he wasn’t going to worry about it. It’d happened; he’d survived. The only thing he had to worry about was not getting lumped in with the damn Confederacy shikigami by some trigger-happy idiots.

 _The shikigami that killed_ -

Koumyou was dead. He couldn’t change that. All he could do was try to save people who were still alive... and track down whoever’d _used_ those shikigami to steal the Seiten Sutra.

: _We will find my sibling_.:

_Why aren’t you angry at me?_

: _Bearer bond to Maten barely completed in time. Bearer bond to Seiten incomplete. Bearer could summon me. Not unbonded sutra. Unreasonable to be angry_.: A papery slide over his shoulder, almost like the brush of Koumyou’s airplanes. : _Trance. Sleep_.:

Right. Sane thing to do. Breathe in, and hold, and out....

* * *

Warm. The barely-there pulse of : _soft cloth_ : and harder : _wooden walls_.: Scents of sweet-sticky fruit, slippery soap, tangy gunpowder. Warmth he was wrapped around, breathing low and quiet, heartbeat a thrum of _comfort, welcome, not-alone._

 _Not the lab_.

Goku opened one eye just a crack, barely daring to believe it. He didn’t remember the lab really well; everything before Sanzo’s hand had touched him was blurry, like rain on windows. But he remembered enough to know what the lab _wasn’t_ like. The lab was cold. Stark. Lonely.

Here… he was warm.

 _Sanzo’s real_.

Pale skin was warm against his tentacles, even under the silky black cloth that kept his stings out. Gold hair spilled past round, human ears, bright as the sun. And on his forehead-

“What are you staring at?”

Violet eyes blinked at him, heavy-lidded but not at all sleepy.

Goku gulped. “I just….” He waved at the little red gem of a dot on Sanzo’s forehead. “It’s pretty. I dunno why I thought it hurt.”

“It did.” Sanzo’s breathing didn’t speed up. Which was kind of neat, if other people didn’t know he was awake when he was-

But also kind of scary, too. Because it fit somehow with clothes like armor and the gun and the way Sanzo walked through armed soldiers without slowing down. And Goku didn’t know what could happen to someone to make them like that, but he didn’t think it was good. “If it hurt, why’d you do it?”

“I didn’t.” Sanzo sat up in the bed, holding one arm out, like he expected something to climb it.

Green-edged white paper snaked down his shoulder, one end resting in Sanzo’s palm to lift now and again, like the questing head of a viper.

“ _Sanzo_ isn’t a name. It’s a title,” the blond stated. “In the temples of Shangri-La, a Sanzo is one of the guardians of the five sutras; the five Heavenly Scriptures Kanzeon’s people used to shape this planet into something they could live on. This is the Maten Sutra. Maten, Son Goku.”

Paper dipped, as if considering him all over again.

“The chakra – that red mark – is the sign you’ve been accepted by a sutra as its guardian,” Sanzo went on. “Though they think of people as _bearers_ , not guardians. Usually they can look after themselves.”

It was paper. Like some of the little booklets Sanzo had had delivered with the food; books with plants and animals and who knew what else. But it moved like it was alive. “The Maten thinks?” Goku frowned. “So… did it save me, or did you?”

“Joint project,” Sanzo said dryly. Frowned, eyes going a little distant. “Maten says it probably couldn’t have acted without me right there as a… template, I think. You needed human DNA to replace some of that viral mess, and between me and its records of other humans it could do a find-and-replace.” Blond brows drew down. “You can listen to that if you want, but when it comes down to it, you saved yourself.”

Goku looked at his hands; it was still so weird to have hands, and know what they were meant for. Flexed claws in and out, a white flash of sharpness. “Because… I was trying to save people, so you knew you could save me.”

“So I knew I could _try_ ,” Sanzo said roughly. “Sometimes that’s all you can do. Try.” He rubbed a hand across his face, the silvery ring holding the armor sleeve on his hand glinting in the faint sun through the curtains. “It’s too early for this. I need coffee.”

“What’s coffee?” Goku said, almost innocently. Because he thought he remembered that word from the lab, and if he did he _wanted_ some.

Sanzo eyed him, utterly deadpan. Lifted off a tentacle, and got out of bed. “I know I’m going to regret this.”

* * *

“Interesting.” Ni Jianyi stepped into the subdued wreckage of what had been a hotel room; curtains half clawed down, bedding tangled into knots covered with a dusting of pillow feathers, the beds themselves upended as if someone had decided to play fort. “Like someone set loose a litter of water-cougar kittens.”

Behind him the hotel manager started squawking something about _never saw the renter_ and _damages_ , and _sue-!_

Ni ignored it. His government-issued mercenaries would manage the man. Or kill him. Ni didn’t really care which. He brought out his gene-reader, and started looking for samples.

 _Curtains look like the place to start_.

They’d been clawed, after all; and if there was one thing the scientists on Nova Roma had been sure of before they fell victim to their own captured creatures, it was that the Akuma virus was carried in the claws.

 _Tentacles would make more sense if it was trying for a fast-spreading infection_ , Ni thought, scanning torn cloth. _But no, this virus likes to get up-close and personal_ -

The gene-reader’s display lit. Not with the pattern he was expecting.

“We need to bag these,” Ni said conversationally, adjusting his glasses. “Looks like I may have a whole new virus to play with.”

“Virus!” the manager sputtered.

“Oh... you should forget you heard that.” Ni smirked at the greasy man, wondering how much his keepers would let him play before they tried to rein him in. “After all, I just might find out you’re infected, too.”

Oh yes, Ni thought, as the manager turned white. Quite a bit of fun to be had here. But he did have work to do. Namely, finding literal hide or hair of that funny young blond Sanzo.

 _Not on the pillows, nothing on the sheets. Check the sink, the tub, the drain_....

Nothing. Not one trace of human DNA where there should be. It was like the rooms had been rented by a digital ghost.

 _Or a Sanzo who’s figured out how to use the Maten to disintegrate any cells left behind_. Ni smirked wider, bagging his curtains. _This could be a challenge_.

Though the real challenge would be in convincing his so-called superiors to search for a Sanzo in the first place. The government tended to be wary of trifling with any religion on Shangri-La, particularly Buddhism. The monks and nuns might preach pacifism and nonviolence, but they liked to put their temples in the most godforsaken places, which meant that a surprising number of them were damn good shots. Witness how many people had survived at Momijizan.

 _They’ll never believe someone could have just walked off with Subject Nine over his shoulder_. Poking the wastebasket for anything besides peach pits, Ni frowned. _We all know how violent it was; not just to us, but to other infected akuma. So... how did this Sanzo get it to change its mind?_

He couldn’t wait to find out.

 _Don’t let me catch you for at least a few days, Genjyo Sanzo_. Ni grinned, peeling off his gloves with a jaunty snap. _I want to see what this new virus can do._

_I wonder who they’ll let me infect this time...?_


	2. Demons vs. Zombies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gonou versus fast, slavering... dare we call them zombies? 
> 
> And Hakuryuu has some very interesting modifications, compared to the usual vehicle AI....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, if you know Hakkai's canon backstory... yeah. This gets bloody. With Language.

_I’m going to kill them_ , Cho Gonou thought, right eye filmed with blood. _I’m going to kill them all_.

Tire iron to the skull of the next hissing, slavering victim. Chef’s knife to slash the throat as it-

_She, oh god, that was the cashier at the corner mart, she was grumpy but she always had a smile for Kanan_ -

-As _it_ went down, foam-flecked teeth still trying to sink into him even as blood pumped out in a thick red flood.

_They’re between me and Kanan. I’m going to kill them all_.

Between him and his wife. Between him and his sister - though how the village elders had found out about that, they’d been so careful-

_It doesn’t matter. They’re all going to die_.

Half of them were dying already, if the screams he heard from behind the hasty barricades of City Hall were any clue. It was almost funny.

The laugh bubbled up from Gonou’s chest as he dodged the next quick set of arms. He didn’t try to stop it. It _was_ funny, that the town had thought they could buy their own lives from monsters by giving the beasts a tithe of human flesh. After all, they’d mostly asked for people the town didn’t _really_ want anyway, especially a young, suspicious teacher’s wife....

_Thank god the children are still out of town. Please, please let them stay away!_

It was the only mercy in this moaning hell. The students he’d been escorting on a weekend camping trip to study one of the safer forests in Shangri-La’s ecosystem were fifty miles from here. Hopefully more, he’d told instructor Ryuji to take them and _run_. While he’d jumped into Hakuryuu, revving the Jeep to follow Kanan’s cut-off transmission and a horrible feeling of impending doom.

The town had seemed almost normal when he’d torn into the main square at noon. Outside of the fearful eyes cringing from every window... and the dismembered, twisted body splayed over the cobblestones.

“Demons that walked like men,” Mayor Fukada had said. “Even if we shot them, they didn’t stay dead... they said they’d leave us alone, all they wanted was-”

Gonou honestly hadn’t paid attention to much beyond that. He’d advanced on the cringing mayor, bare-handed; ready to make him bleed. Make him scream.

Then the real screaming had started.

_Some of those they took... came back_.

Came back staggering. Hissing. _Hungry_.

As the shadows grew toward sunset, Gonou didn’t know how many of his fellow townsfolk were still alive. Right now he didn’t care. The horde had come from a specific direction. He’d sent up Hakuryu’s robot drone to backtrack them, while he fought through them as a distraction. If there were any chance, any at all....

_Kanan is not going to die like this!_

Hakuryuu’s drone flashed white and orange in the sunset, the dragon-shaped mechanism hovering even as its talons gripped his shoulder. “Kyuu!”

Relief threatened to knock Gonou’s knees from under him. The Jeep’s low growl as it rumbled to life made him grit his teeth and fight on, aware the AI was trading off tasks between drone and vehicle to reach its master. “Where?”

A meaty thump, and one of the slavering horde slid off Hakuryuu’s hood as the Jeep screeched to a halt beside him, town map already up on the dash display. Kanan’s persacomm ID blinked off one edge, _damaged-transmission_ red.

Teeth bared, Gonou staggered into the driver’s seat, crowbar lashing out one more time before he snapped his seatbelt shut and hit the accelerator.

_After all_ , Gonou smiled, as Hakuryuu’s drone settled into the passenger seat and the Jeep swerved to take down yet another hissing attacker, _safety first_.

It was a _very_ bumpy ride.

“Did you activate the snow tracks?” Gonou wondered, glancing at the console as they wove through darkening streets.

“Cheep!”

“Oh, it is a good idea,” Gonou agreed. “Forgive me. I was under the silly impression that your model had certain built-in prohibitions?” Against exactly the sort of bloody mayhem they were committing now. After all, if you had an AI capable of operating a vehicle, you didn’t want it possibly hacked to mow down random groups of innocent bystanders.

“Cheep?”

He didn’t believe that innocent blink of red eyes for a moment. Though the console’s listing of certain custom updates was surprisingly illuminating. “My, my. I never would have thought Kanan would be so... preemptive.”

They’d joked about it, yes; that if someone found out who they were, what they were to each other, they might have to run down the howling mob trying to tear them apart. Or rather, he’d joked. Kanan always had been the stronger one.

_She still is. I’m going to find her!_

No more hissing lurchers, not this far from town hall. Which didn’t make him feel any better. “Scan everything.”

“Kyuu?”

“We’re looking for things that are alive,” Gonou answered the more complex query on-screen, “and aren’t human.”

“Cheep!”

Two legs. Two arms. A head. But the writhing tentacles emerging from a torn flowery shirt, and the fanged grin catching Hakuryuu’s headlights-

_Demon!_

Even with the belt, the swerve and the thump made his world flash red with pain.

_Oh. I guess one of them hit me...._

Wheels squealed, as a body that should have been pulped under spiky treads writhed out from under the Jeep’s chassis. Clawed hands gripped the door handle, trying to yank it open, even as tentacles lashed out like lightning-

“Lighter!”

The white drone breathed a puff of flames, heat scorching past Gonou’s face to sear alien flesh.

_Thank goodness for fusion batteries_ , Gonou thought inanely, putting knife and crowbar to work again. He had to trust Hakuryuu to drive as he and the demon struggled for the wheel; trust his AI, who’d served Kanan as long as his master. _They make special effects so much easier_....

Even with friendly fire, six limbs against two really wasn’t fair. He managed to tangle two of the tentacles around the crowbar and yank the wheel sideways, just enough to scrape his unwanted guest against a handy post office box-

_Federal crime, interfering with the mail, three to five_ , the back of a teacher’s mind quipped. _Add it to the decades you’ll serve for murder. A whole life supposedly spent inside the letter of the law, and you’ve blown it in one horrible night_.

Even stretched and torn, muscled tentacles didn’t break. Yet they did tear, and the demon flopped against the window-frame for one brief moment-

Gonou drove his knife in under that fanged jaw, and yanked.

_The blood... doesn’t look_ right.

But his enemy was finally sliding loose, as Hakuryuu swerved yet again, thumping over a few things Gonou was just as glad he didn’t see. That was all that mattered.

_No_ , Gonou thought coldly, taking the wheel back as Kanan’s red ID gleamed closer. _She’s all that matters_. “Can you get any better read on her persacomm, Hakuryuu?”

The AI’s squeal was as indignant as Gonou had ever heard it. The full answer-query string would have meant more to Kanan - but the part he could grasp was chilling enough. “Deliberate signal jamming?”

“Kyuu!”

A chill trickled down Gonou’s spine. No one jammed a persacomm signal. They weren’t just ordinary comms, they were a lifeline. Roads on Shangri-La’s frontier were jumbled earth and rocks, often as not; even a sturdy Jeep model like Hakuryuu could break down. Blocking the signal of someone who might be lost in the howling wilderness could be deadly.

_But if they’re gengineered, if they’re shikigami - they have to be! - then who found a way to hack a Satrapy persacomm? Even Confederacy pirates can’t bribe their way into that before our hackers find a way to block them all over again_.

Yet Hakuryuu’s sensors swore Kanan was being jammed. What in the worlds was going on?

Gonou slewed the Jeep sideways through the near-empty parking lot of the Polymer Wearhouse, home to everything from plain structural plastics for home 3-D printers to exotic naturalcraft fibers for everyone’s knitting-mad grandmothers. If Hakuryuu’s sensors were right, Kanan - or at least her persacomm - was right inside the front door.

“Oh, please,” Gonou muttered. His hands trembled on the wheel as he eyed the broken sliding doors, the smears of drying red blood on parking lot bumpers and shattered glass. “I teach history, whoever you are. Can we say obvious trap?”

He laid on Hakuryuu’s horn, instead.

“Now that sounds like an invitation, brothers.” The voice seemed to echo from everywhere and nowhere. “Remember, the Hyakugan Maoh wants him _alive_.”

_Centipede King? What on_ -

Shadows writhed.

* * *

Gonou never quite blacked out. But a tentacle clubbed his head somewhere in the frantic melee, despite Hakuryuu running over even the fastest toes, and things were distinctly _fuzzy_.

Copper tang of blood in the air; on his tongue, in his teeth. The painful yank of clawed hands dragging him by the arms. A thump of his fumbling feet over a parking lot speed bump, before they dragged over a concrete curb and shushed through the shattered glass of the doorway.

But none of that mattered, not even the smirk on the silver-haired demon directing the torment mattered, because he could see a small figure curled on herself by the front counter. Arms around her knees, head bent, chestnut brown hair flowing free almost to the lilies hemming her simple silver-gray dress. “Kanan!”

She shivered, head buried in her knees as if she’d blot out the world.

_Who could blame her?_ “Kanan,” Gonou got out through split lips, trying to think past the ringing in his head to twist free. “It’s Gonou, beloved, I’m here-”

“Go ahead, little Kanan.” A massive amber-haired demon seemed to appear out of the counter’s shadows, nodding to his silver subordinate before he trailed a clawed hand tenderly through chestnut hair. “Show him your pretty face.”

Kanan shuddered, choking off a sob as claws seized her hair and yanked-

Gonou stared into eyes no longer leaf-green, and felt the last fluttering hope die.

She still looked like Kanan. But her skin was flushed and sweaty with fever, her eyes glazed with a translucent sheen of feral gold, and the lips he knew so well, had loved, had kissed-

Pink lips were snow-white with foam, as she trembled in place.

_I’m going to kill them all_.

“Usually the ones we pick... well, after the clawing, they don’t have any fight left.” Long amber locks waved around the Hyakugan Maoh’s face, as if they were as independent of the wind as the tentacles reaching out of a dark, almost military suit. “Still too human. Still too _weak_. You have to wait for the fever to really kick in before the hunger gets them moving. And then they can’t think... but that’s for the best, oh yes. Better to weed out the ones without instinct first, before they Turn. We don’t need weaklings in the clans.”

_Turn_. Gonou could hear the capital letter, the way the demon’s voice caressed it. _Does he really think... no, that’s impossible. Whoever raised these things must have lied to them. Even the craziest Confederacy gengineer knows you can’t transform a grown human into - into something else. It has to be a toxin. Or a virus. Something that just - just clouds the minds and kills people. Has to be_.

And if it was a toxin, then maybe, just maybe....

“But once in a while... oh, once in a while we get a strong one,” the Hyakugen Maoh gloated. “Strong as one of us even before they Turn.” Dark eyes slid his way, gleaming gold like a cat’s catching the light. “You killed your way here. I wonder if you’ll be that strong.”

_No. Kanan’s always been stronger_. “Who are you?” Gonou choked out. “What are you?”

The Maoh raised an eyebrow, and hmphed. “Yisou.”

“As you wish, my king.” The silver-haired demon leading Gonou’s guards laughed. “Isn’t it obvious, human?” He spread hands and silver-furred tentacles wide. “We’re youkai!”

_What?_ Gonou thought, bewildered. _That’s impossible, that’s old Earth folklore, and this is - it’s just not possible!_ “You’re shikigami,” he blurted out. “You’re _constructs_ , and when the Satrapy finds you-”

More laughter rang in his ears; rang _through_ his ears, somehow, as if he could feel their gloating and grim amusement in his own heartbeat.

“You have so much to learn, little man,” the Maoh chuckled. “Shall we introduce ourselves properly? I am Hyakugen Maoh, the leader of the Centipede Clan. Your keeper there is Chin Yisou, my second. And you are- well, you will also be of our clan, soon enough.” A slow, fanged smile. “From the blood already on you... I think you’ll enjoy it.”

“I won’t be a monster!” Gonou lunged against inhuman muscle; fruitlessly, their grip was as strong as a cargo-loader. “I’ll die first!”

“That’s not what your fellow townsfolk think.” Chin Yisou smiled, slick and venomous as a scorpion eel. “They didn’t know much, but when they saw the claws... oh, they _talked_.”

“Indeed they did. He’s the one you were waiting for, hmm?” The Hyakugan Maoh bent nearer to Kanan. “Go ahead, my little dove. Give your brother a kiss.”

Like someone moving underwater, Kanan stood. Staggered. Caught herself on the Maoh’s arrogant arm, thick as her thigh, and stepped slowly toward her husband.

“I’m sorry,” Gonou whispered. He had to look away from that reeling walk; had to steel himself against what he knew was coming. _Claws mean it’s probably venom. If I can get us free, get us to a hospital... they have to be lying, there’s no way gene-manipulation can turn a human into - into whatever they are, it’s not possible!_

Bloodied steel caught his eye, and Gonou forced himself not to lunge. One of the demons holding him had picked up his knife, tucking it through a slice in the robe it seemed to be wearing more for pockets than modesty. If he could look weaker than he was, if he could reach it....

“Hmm?” The Maou hovered over Kanan’s shoulder, claws steadying her as she swayed again. “Did you want something, little dove?”

_She saw!_

Slowly, Kanan reached for the knife. Closed her fingers around it, clumsily, as if she wasn’t certain of her grip. Held it up, clotting red a wet gleam casting back flickers of the few overhead lights left intact.

Spun light as a dancing angel, and drove steel into the Maoh’s black heart.

Whatever the youkai were, they could still be _surprised_.

Gonou sagged, braced, and drove an elbow into an inhuman kidney, even as his guards surged toward Kanan.

Their mistake. She ripped the knife out of the Maoh’s chest, weaving a net of steel worthy of any Drunken Master.

“Thank you,” Gonou said reflexively, yanking his crowbar from another youkai’s lax grip. “Hakuryuu!”

For a moment he almost believed the Maoh’s story, because along with the homicidal rage and bestial hate he saw _disbelief_. Everyone on Shangri-La knew vehicle AIs were programmed for human safety. They’d never enter a building that wasn’t a parking garage-

Hakuryuu roared through the shattered doors, sending youkai rolling like tentacled tumbleweeds.

_So close!_ “Kanan!” Gonou seized Hakuryuu’s doorframe, using the leverage to beat down a stunned youkai even as the dragon-drone set the beast’s writhing not-hair on fire. “Come on!”

“It’s too late for me.” Her voice shook, even as her hands flickered steel in the center of a knot of snarling monsters. “You don’t know... how much I want to make you a _monster_. Go! Stay alive.” She drew a hissing breath. “Hakuryuu! Evacuation code Tomoe!”

_What-?_

The Jeep jerked forward and sideways, knocking him inside the driver’s side. The dragon landed on him, just enough weight to keep a shocked man from pitching back out as the Jeep screeched and reversed, tearing out into the night.

Disbelieving, Gonou fought his way upright in the seat, jerking in his right leg before a parking barrier could smash his kneecap. He hurt, like something had tried to rip his heart out-

The hand he pressed to his side came away wet with blood.

_One of them clawed me_.

It couldn’t hurt half as much as Kanan’s words. What he knew they’d meant.

_I die, so that you may live._

_She planned for - for a disaster. She planned to leave me behind_.... “Hakuryuu, turn around!”

The Jeep’s squeal held utter negation. _‘Kanan owner of record,’_ the console read. _‘Evacuation plan: Tomoe. Priority: Final.’_

“Get Gonou out, no matter what he says, Hakuryuu!” Kanan’s recorded voice said fiercely. “Get him safe. No matter what!”

“Kanan,” Gonou whispered. Her loss was like a fire, it burned-

_Burning. From the claws_.

“Hakuryuu, I think I’ve been poisoned. Or - infected.” It was a wave of heat, fighting the chill of blood loss. How very odd. “You - you can’t take me to the next town. They just have a doctor, they can’t contain something like this-!”

Hakuryuu’s wheels hit a bump.

_Forgot to strap in_ -

Black.

* * *

The horn woke Sha Gojyo up out of a perfectly good hangover. “’S not Banri,” he mumbled to himself, stumbling out of tangled sheets. “Wrong horn.”

Not that that really meant much, when it came to his sometimes cardsharp, sometimes fellow gold-panning buddy. Banri was as capable of hotwiring a car as he was of talking most lovely ladies into giving him a ride, so who knew what he might show up in next.

Still, that urgent beep didn’t sound like anything Banri would pick to drive. Which was odd enough for Gojyo to make sure he had his hands on a nice hefty length of steel pipe when he opened the door. After all, most people didn’t spot his shack off the main road unless they were really looking for it. And anyone who put that much effort into finding a two-bit prospector... well, it was a lot more likely they were tracking down his _other_ hobby. The one involving certain fine computer hardware hidden under what looked like dirty laundry, and a whole host of programs that might make someone of an official bent very, very suspicious. Shame on them.

But there was no one at the door. Just a hardened backwoods Jeep, nothing special to look at, lights cutting through the night and fusion engine purring hopefully.

“Okay,” Gojyo said thoughtfully. “Polite. Kind of. You want to come out where I can see you?”

The door opened, the overhead light in the frame shining down on an empty driver’s seat.

_Drone or AI- Wait_. Against his better judgment, Gojyo shouldered the pipe and walked closer. Red stains on the doorframe. On the wheels. On the seat-

One breath, and he knew. “Blood. Shit.”

The console inside lit.

_‘Owner of record: Cho Kanan, attacked, presumably deceased. Secondary driver of record: Cho Gonou, attacked, delirious. Current location: 2 km north, roadside. Drone monitoring. Current status: Temperature elevated, blood pressure low, delirium.’_

_‘Help!’_

“No shit his blood pressure’s low,” Gojyo muttered, already running through his first-aid kit in his head. This much blood loss, the guy didn’t have time to wait for paramedics. And the Jeep was definitely an AI; and _quality_ , at that, adding on the personal touch. Man, he wanted a look at that programming. Later. “Attacked? Did you call the cops?” Silly question, of course an AI with a hurt driver would have-

_‘No.’_

Gojyo started. “Say what?”

The picture that flashed up on the console almost made Gojyo drop the pipe. It was blurry and washed out, obviously taken in bad light - but the claws and the tentacles and the whole something up on two legs, where no native predator outside a spider-bear would do that willingly.... “What the hell? Shikigami?”

Explained the blood, all right. Didn’t explain why the AI hadn’t called the cops, the Feds, the _Planetary Guard_....

_‘Attacker ID uncertain. Driver BP dropping. Help!’_

“Got it, got it,” Gojyo said hastily, letting his pipe drop into the backseat. “Let me get my kit or he won’t have a chance.”

_Don’t know if he’ll have a chance with the kit_ , Gojyo thought, racing back inside. Cursing his nice, innocent, gold-panner setup; no fancy AI or voice-command program activation out in plain sight for him. For that he’d have to duck through the trapdoor with more of his dirty laundry, and this Cho guy definitely didn’t have time for that. _Clotting bandages, blood expanders, check. Never thought I’d be glad I’ve had to patch up Banri too many times_....

Kit in hand, Gojyo paused. Grabbed a few small, round, black globes Banri had left the last time he’d blown through, and dashed out the door.

_Whatever the hell attacked Cho, I’m taking more than a pipe!_

He jogged back out into the headlights, around to the passenger door. “No offense, but I think you’d better drive-”

His butt hit the seat, and the Jeep took off.

“Oi! Seatbelt! Man!”

The overhead light snapped back on, just long enough for him to find it, but his fusion-powered kidnapper never slowed down.

“You must really like this guy,” Gojyo muttered, tugging the strap snug across his manly chest. Quick as this Jeep was moving, he might need it.

_‘Driver safety AI first priority.’_

“Right, right, official programming line-”

_‘Driver Cho Gonou very thoughtful.’_

“And that is very much not official,” Gojyo observed, half to himself. “You are way, way more top of the line than you look, aren’t you?”

_‘Clarify query?’_

“Top of the line enough to be snarky,” Gojyo muttered. A regular AI would have replied with model and serial number, or at least the info that said information was restricted. This Jeep could play _innocent_.

_Like AI, like owner_ , Gojyo thought, amused. And worried, as rain started drumming on the tarp roof overhead. _Stay alive, Cho. I want to meet a guy who’s almost as sneaky as me_.

Sooner than he’d expected, headlights caught a flash of wet white by the side of the road.

“Your drone’s a dragon?” Gojyo whistled, long and low. An AI as smart as this Jeep’s deserved the ego-stroke. “Nice. Way to blend in with the locals.”

Well, except for the white part. Most of Shangri-La’s dragons weren’t albino. But compared to the owl, bat, and plain helicopter-style drones most people set up with their AIs, this Jeep’s autonomous half was subtle as silk-

Lights caught a splash of red as the Jeep braked, and Gojyo shoved thoughts of flattery aside. Took a deep breath, and unlatched his belt, following white wings through the rain.

_Oh hell_.

The dark-haired man was all but facedown in red-stained mud. His ribs rose and fell with each breath, but even as the drone thumped down on his shoulder, pale fingers barely twitched.

Eyeing the countless cuts, bruises, and one gut-deep gash in the guy’s side, Gojyo almost hoped he didn’t wake up. That had to hurt like hell.

_Hate to move him_. Gojyo crouched, trying to get the best grip. _But there’s no way I can bandage him in this muck, and hypothermia will do him in if the blood loss doesn’t_ -

Elevated temp, hell. Cho’s skin was _hot_.

_Fuck. Shikigami carry venom, right? Some of ‘em, anyway. Shit, the rain might be keeping him alive!_

If he got Cho back to his cabin, he could bury the guy in ice. A gut wound like that needed treating, fast.

_Get him into the seat, see what we’re dealing with_.

One unresponsive dark-haired victim thumped back into the driver’s seat. Gojyo took a second to swipe blood and muck off his hands with a steri-cloth, then swiped another across Cho’s throat so he could hook up the bag of plasma substitute.

White wings were almost silent, as the drone landed in the passenger seat to fix his driver with a worried red eye. Drips of rain pattered on the slick cover as the drone took one step nearer. “Cheep?”

“Plasma should get his pressure up, buy us some time,” Gojyo explained. Who knew how much programming this AI had in emergency medicine, but most vehicle AIs came with the basics, the better to call a hospital when their drivers were in big trouble. “Looks like he got beat up pretty bad, but most of that should heal. Real problem’s the... claw wound. Ugh.”

A bristle of fake mane. “Cheep!”

“Right, right, you knew that already.” Gojyo grinned wryly. Whoever’d programmed the drone had loved details. That was real dragon body language; at least as close as an inorganic construct could manage. “Okay, I’m no medic, but if he’s poisoned, we’d better clean this out before I try any stitches.”

Thank the gods first-aid kits came with recorded instructions. Gojyo listened to a calm nurse’s voice in the rain, using wound irrigant and steri-cloths to the letter.

“We should transport instead of trying to stitch him here,” Gojyo told the little dragon, wrapping clotting bandages around Cho’s midsection as fast as he could. One more bit of tape... done. He slammed the driver’s door, skidded around the front of the Jeep to hop into his side and grab for the seatbelt before-

The Jeep didn’t quite take off again before the strap was secure. But it was close.

“Pushy,” Gojyo muttered, peering through the rain-washed dark as the Jeep headed home. “Okay, now call the Guard.”

_‘No.’_

Say what? “Look, I get stubborn,” Gojyo said with aggravated patience. “I get not wanting to bring down the authorities on your head. But your driver needs help-”

_‘Copper Village under persacomm blackout.’_

Had to be where Cho was from, fine, they weren’t under a comm blackout here- Wait. “Seriously?” Because persacomms just didn’t lose connections, not unless....

_Oh, I have a bad feeling about this_.

_‘Query to Guard website elicited official message, “Toxic chemical exposure, response in progress”.’_ The AI let a deliberate two seconds pass. _‘Message came with attempted malware download.’_

Gojyo felt his jaw drop. Sure, he was a small-time crook and didn’t trust the government as far as he could throw them, but this? This was new. “They’re covering up a shikigami attack?”

_‘Must conclude malware deliberate attempt to compromise AI and threaten driver safety. Will_ not _contact Guard again.’_

Snarky, paranoid AI. Interesting. Gojyo shook his head, a few stray dark locks falling past his headband, calling on the same snap judgment he’d use during a hack gone drastically wrong. “I can get his blood pressure up, probably keep him from losing any more blood. But shikigami have venom sometimes, he’s burning up - and even if we get that handled, gut wounds are _nasty_. Eat you up with infection nasty. In a day or so I might have to call a hospital just to keep him alive.” He leaned back against the jouncing seat. “By the way, Sha Gojyo. What d’you want me to call you?”

_‘Hakuryuu.’_ A pause. _‘Limits of medical aid acknowledged. Thank you.’_

“You’re welcome,” Gojyo said wryly. “So! Want to toss ideas on how we treat your driver when I drag him inside?”

* * *

Gojyo swiped back sweaty hair, and squinted a few times, trying to ease the burn of too much stress too long. Not that he grudged Cho the effort, or the mess his muddy, bloody clothes were making of Banri’s cot. If Gojyo ever got himself beaten up and half-killed by a shikigami, he hoped someone would have the decency to pick _him_ up.

Right now the cold packs seemed to be keeping Cho’s fever down from inferno to just raving level. The guy’s breathing was good. His color was still a little pale, but the first aid kit’s little pressure and oxygen monitor said the guy was more-or-less in normal range. The AI drone was watching it, and Goyjo was sure the little dragon would be all over him if something went wrong.

_I don’t like this_.

Gojyo hadn’t had the chance to do more than the quickest snoop around Copper Village’s internet footprint. What he’d found, or make that what he _hadn’t_ found....

_Nobody in Copper Village is poking the ‘Net. Nobody_.

The odds of an _entire town_ deciding to take an information holiday were pretty much Slim, son of None. Put that together with Hakuryuu’s picture of something really ugly, and, well....

_Cho might be the last guy out of there_.

Which meant Gojyo really ought to be calling the Guard to report this. Except the AI swore the Guard had tried to hit an innocent query with malware. While saying Copper Village was ground zero for a toxic chemical exposure.

_Somebody’s lying to me_.

AIs could lie. At least by omission. Most people didn’t know that, because most AIs were nowhere near as smart and snarky as Hakuryuu. Gojyo had only met a few AIs this capable outside of various military and high-tech companies, and he’d love to know how the Chos had gotten their hands on this one. He’d be willing to bet, not quite legally. Which meant hiding something this smart in a rugged Jeep made perfect sense.

So. Take it for granted Hakuryuu could be lying to him. There was still the evidence, in the form of one delirious, almost-killed driver. And the evidence said the government was _definitely_ lying. Which was... okay, terrifying. Why would anyone lie about shikigami? The gengineered monsters were bad enough as it was. What could be worse?

_I don’t know_.

So he wasn’t calling the Guard. Not _yet_.

_I need more info_. Gojyo rolled a kink out of his shoulders, and snatched a beat-up satchel from under a tastefully draped silky black negligee. _And I know where I can get it_.

Granted, he was no crime scene tech. But he had a decent set of eyes, a brain, and some remote system readers that would let him poke the planetary ‘Net to get some info on what the AI had been accessing, without hacking Hakuryuu himself.

After all, hacking something that smart would be _rude_. And Jien had made sure his kid brother got raised smart enough not to cross cranky AIs who’d already run somebody over tonight.

The rain had let up a little, but it was still damp and cold, with the pitter-patter of water drops finding their way off trees. Gojyo would forever blame that for what happened next.

After all, _white robes_. Nobody got that close without cheating.

“Sha Gojyo?”

_Sweet holy fuck where did he- where did_ they _come from?_

White robes, blond hair, and a pretty face you could have used to freeze lava. Gojyo jumped despite himself; because A, if he didn’t know better he’d swear the green-edged paper on the guy’s shoulders was _looking_ at him, and B, how the hell had a priest and his wild-haired mini-minion gotten this close without a paranoid AI raising the alarm six ways from Sunday?

_Walked_ , Gojyo realized, seeing their muddy sandals. _Maybe from somewhere nearby, but they walked in here_.

Still shouldn’t have blanked them from Hakuryuu’s sensors. Especially given how the Jeep had just squealed, like the AI hadn’t had one clue they were there until the priest spoke.

_Stall_ , Gojyo thought, trying to figure out why a kid barely getting to teenager freaked him out so much. Maybe the thick gold headband? Something about the way raindrops beaded off it wasn’t _right_. “Who’s asking?”

Violet eyes were hard as steel. “Genjyo Sanzo, currently with the Temple of the Setting Sun, Chang’an.”

Which was not at all close to here. What the heck? “What are you, lost?”

Wait. Sanzo. Where had he heard that name before?

“Nope!” the kid announced brightly, padding closer. And how a kid could pad silently through mud, Gojyo had no idea. “We’re looking for somebody. Only... well, if he’s not really lucky, he might not be a _somebody_ anymore.”

Then the kid sniffed, could the night get any weirder, and gold eyes narrowed. “Sanzo? I think he got blood on him. He smells like... well, it’s not bad yet-”

“Oi! I smell like a legitimate bachelor,” Gojyo shot back, heart racing a little faster. Sure, he’d gotten Cho’s blood on him, you could hardly help it with a gash that bad, gloves or no gloves. And his brain had to pick now to remember some of those internet rumors about shikigami carrying Strickland’s?

_Get to a doc, get your lungs vacuumed out, stop picking up idiot bleeding strangers_ , Gojyo told himself, sidling nearer to Hakuryuu. And the quietly-opening window, _smart_ AI, so he could grab his pipe if he had to. _You’ll be fine_ -

“You’re screwed,” Sanzo said bluntly, ignoring the chill of the rain. “We’re going to check the guy you picked up to see how screwed you are. If he’s still human. At all. What hit Copper Village _wasn’t shikigami_.”

_And how could you know that, unless_ -

Gojyo tossed one of Banri’s smoke bombs, and dove for steel.

* * *

_What a horrible nightmare_.

Gonou blinked gummy eyelids, feeling painful cold sandwiched against his sides. It seemed to be helping him think. Which was good, there was something - something he had to do....

“Cheep?”

“Hakuryuu,” Gonou mumbled, blinking again to focus on artificial red eyes as the drone perched on a cluttered table. Odd; normally he didn’t think of how the AI’s drone was inorganic, no matter how realistic it looked. Only right now every breath seemed to bring a waft of synthetics, and-

_Not alive. Not prey. Won’t hurt him_.

It was an aching relief, to know he wouldn’t hurt Hakuryuu.

_I’m still alive?_

He certainly hadn’t intended to be. He distinctly remembered fumbling his way back to feverish consciousness, and deliberately opening Hakuryuu’s door to hurl himself out of it. Whatever infection he carried, Gonou meant it to die with him.

Only someone on this empty back road had found him. Bandaged him up. Packed long bags of ice against him to try and bring his fever down; he could smell the marks of the stranger’s hands on the plastic.

_He smells... wrong_.

Not bad, exactly. Just - not right. Not what he had to find-

There was a _crack_ outside, like someone had set off a firecracker. Hakuryuu’s drone flicked his gaze toward the door, wings half-lifting as if the dragon wasn’t sure whether or not to risk leaving him.

_Fair enough. Last time I tried to die on him. And... I should still do that. I think?_ “What’s going on?”

White wings rustled. “Kyuu....”

Whatever it was, was an unholy racket. None of the hissing and screaming Gonou would have expected from youkai and their infected victims; instead there was very human cursing, and thumping, and what sounded like a _clang_ of metal on metal, then a _squelch_ like something hitting mud hard-

_“Oh holy-!”_

The front door crashed open; a tall, denim-clad stranger with the ice-bag scent spilling off the broken panels onto the floor. Half of a metal pipe was still in his hands, even as the guy blinked dazedly at his small attacker-

Gonou stared, and lifted a hot hand to rub at crusted eyes. He... didn’t _think_ he should be seeing double?

One image. A wild brown-haired teenager in muddy jeans and a red silk side-buttoned shirt, with an odd thick gold headband, almost like a crown. His hands flexed, fingers curling in and out like Hakuryuu’s drone seeking a good hold.

Under that image - around it? - were distortions, weaving through the air. Long, and lithe, and oddly familiar.

_His scent_ , Gonou thought, half-rising even though everything hurt. _I know that scent!_

Which meant he _had_ to get off this table, because whoever had helped him didn’t deserve to die for it. And no matter how much he wanted to die, how much he _should_ die, then if he was right he still needed to kill one more thing this night-

“Goku!”

The not-kid froze.

_White_ , was the first thing Gonou saw. Just before mud, smeared from pretty face to robed knee, and a cold snarl that made him doubt anyone in this room would get out alive.

_...Since when do Buddhist priests carry revolvers?_

Dripping mud from blond hair on down, the priest kept his aim on Gonou’s luckless good Samaritan. “What have I told you about clawing people?”

“Um.” Goku twitched. “Don’t? But he’s already got it....”

“Sha’s got _a_ version of the damn virus. We don’t know if it’s the same as yours. And I’m going to have a hard enough time dealing with one. If I can. We don’t know _that_ yet, either.”

“Virus?” Sha coughed from the floor. “Look, guys; he got attacked by a shikigami, they carry nasty stuff but not-”

“They said they weren’t shikigami.” Gonou kept his gaze on Goku, trying to think around the impulse to flee, or attack, or - or he didn’t _know_ what. He knew what Goku was, he could see the shimmer that something was trying to hide, and yet.... “I should want to kill you.”

“What?” Goku straightened out of his crouch, suddenly looking a lot more like a kid. “But - I didn’t - Sanzo an’ me, we came to help!”

“We came to try to stop an akuma attack,” Sanzo said bluntly. “We were too late.” Violet eyes narrowed at Gonou. “You said they talked?”

_Tell him_ , Gonou thought, despairing. _Tell him everything you can, before you ask for that bullet_. “They called themselves youkai. The Centipede Clan-”

A gust of rainy wind blew chill from the door. Wafting along the scent of mud, and strange human, and....

_Mine!_

He was fast. Goku was faster.

The floor _hurt_ , like a punch to his already torn gut. Fever made the world flash in and out; hunger came snarling with it.

_Like starving. Like - oh god, no!_ “Shoot me! Please!”

Goku was holding him down. Goku was using more than hands to hold him down; and while part of Gonou wanted to flinch and scream at the monster, the bit of his mind that still held some fading shreds of sanity was just grateful Goku _could_ hold him. Because Sanzo’s scent in the wind and the rain was like the sizzle of a steak, the melting dark savory of chocolate, the warm promise of Kanan’s hair untied....

_She said. She said I didn’t know._

_Oh god. I know now_.

“Shoot me,” Gonou whispered. Trembling even as he tried to hold still; tried not to fight. “Before I make you a monster too.”

“What the fuck is going _on_ here?” Sha burst out.

“There’s a virus loose on Shangri-La,” Sanzo said flatly. “It’s in the claws. It makes monsters. And then _they_ make monsters.” His thumb drew the hammer back with an audible _click_. “If you want to get shot, I want your name first.”

“Hey-!”

“It’s all right, Mr. Sha,” Gonou said politely, even as the fever tried to push him to hate, rend, _tear_. “Thank you for trying.” He stared at the black hole of the muzzle, wondering how much it would hurt. “Cho Gonou. Though... some of the people in my town said they shot the youkai, and the monsters just got up again....”

“Not akuma, but close, then,” Sanzo concluded. “Useful to know.” A quiet breath. “Gonou. When I shoot something, it stays shot.”

“That’s oddly comforting,” Gonou managed, touched. “Please be quick. I’m not sure... it’s so hard to hang on.”

“No!” Sha surged up off the floor; stopped at Sanzo’s cold look. “Look, if it’s a virus he’s sick! We need to get him to a doctor, maybe get him into cryo; put him in hibernation stasis if we have to. Not kill him!”

“It’s all right, Sha,” Gonou insisted. It probably would have been more convincing if he weren’t crying. Damn it. He didn’t _want_ to cry. “I don’t want to be a monster. I... tried to avenge my wife. And someone knows what happened. It’s enough.”

“The hell it is.”

He had to look up. Had to look into violet eyes, and shiver at the joy he felt, seeing cold murder writ clear on a human face.

“Someone set this virus loose,” Sanzo said coldly, “and I’m going to _kill them_.”

_Oh_ , Gonou thought, dazed. Hearing the promise of fire and death in those words, and aching to follow. _Oh, I want that so much_....

“I can’t promise you anything,” his muddy avenging angel said darkly. “I can’t even promise you’ll live. I yanked Goku back to something closer to human, but he can’t remember anything before some sadistic bastard’s lab. Even that’s blurry. But there’s a madman out there making people into monsters, and the kami are freaked out enough they ordered me to go stop him.”

“The _kami_ are freaked out?” Gojyo eyed them all, trying to not make it obvious he was gauging the distance between himself and the gun, even now. “Aren’t they... you know, energy?”

“I don’t think anyone knows for sure,” Gonou managed, worry penetrating even the fever-haze. Shangri-La had been settled for years before humans had figured out they weren’t the only civilization on the planet. Given no one in any of the far-flung human worlds had ever found intelligent aliens before, the Satrapy had clamped down on that information _hard_.

Lucky for humans, the energy-manipulating kami apparently found their new neighbors amusing. And weren’t at all averse to being recognized as higher powers. So long as specific parts of the planet stayed off limits, humans were free to poke the rest of it.

_If the kami aren’t laughing anymore... we’re all in danger_.

Kanan was dead. Gonou was as good as dead. But his students-!

_I want to save them_.

Yet he wasn’t sure how much of that was rational thought, and how much was his heart racing, the fever pushing him to _get closer, get what’s mine, take him before we have to hide_.

_I can’t tell anymore. Does it matter?_ “Life as a monster, or a merciful bullet,” Gonou whispered. He had to smile. “Decisions, decisions.”

Sanzo snorted. “You act like you think it’s either/or.” His finger was steady on the trigger, silver ring gleaming against black synthspider silk. “I can always shoot you _later_.”

 


	3. Laying Low

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kanzeon and Genjyo Sanzo, sterling examples of mercy and compassion....
> 
> Okay, you can stop giggling now. Sanzo's version of compassion fits better with a monster outbreak anyway. 
> 
> Gojyo would like to know what he did to deserve this mess, thanks. Though at least outwitting heavily-armed containment units isn't boring....

“Ow....” Blinking like he’d stared into a welding torch, Sha Gojyo threw what he probably thought was a decent glare Sanzo’s way. Frankly, Sanzo had seen scarier on hibernating spider-bears. “I thought priests were supposed to be about mercy and compassion.”

Sutra settling back on his shoulders, Sanzo barely lifted a brow. “You’re alive.”

“...You have a damn low threshold of mercy and compassion.”

Patting Cho’s unconscious cheek, Goku bristled. “Hey! He could’ve just shot you.”

Gojyo shoved his hands into his jeans, trying to look like he didn’t hurt like ten miles of bad road from the sutra’s mostly-controlled blast of nasty. “What, and that’s supposed to be an improvement?”

“So far as the kami have been able to track it, this virus has a seventy percent fatality rate,” Sanzo said dryly. “I thought you’d rather not take the chance of surviving. Given that thirty percent ends up _cannibalistic monsters_.”

“...Um.” Gojyo scratched sheepishly at his headband. “Okay, point- Damn. Hakuryuu!”

The dragon looked up. “Cheep?”

“We need to block your broadcast ID,” Gojyo said, talking fast. “Better yet, change it. If the jerk-priest here tracked you from Copper Village, it’s only a matter of time before the Guard-”

“Kyuu!” The dragon launched for the door, landing on Gojyo’s shoulder just long enough to start dragging.

“Keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty over there,” Gojyo called back, just before white wings swept out the door. “I got this one.”

“I think he means it.” Goku grinned at the shadow disappearing in the rain. “Wow, Cho got really lucky... um. Is that supposed to be happening?”

Sanzo squinted, almost hoping he was seeing things. No such luck. There was still a slick, golden sheen appearing wherever Cho had exposed skin. “You’re asking me?” Though there was something he could ask. _Any ideas?_

: _Viral analysis suggests likely protective preparation for tissue lysis and regeneration into transformed phenotype_ ,: the Maten noted.

Oh joy. _This didn’t happen to Goku!_

: _Mini-terror-monkey had already undergone DNA alteration before bearer invoked Maten. Likely lysis/regeneration stage occurred prior to encounter_.:

That made an unsettling amount of sense. Goku had already been inhuman; the Maten had just done some find-and-replace, with hefty amounts of kami energy supplied to remake body and DNA. With Cho, they’d hit the virus _before_ it really got to work. The unlucky bastard was just going to have to suffer through the rest himself. “He’s transforming,” Sanzo bit out. “We need to get him out of sight. I don’t know what will happen.”

_I don’t even know how this can work. The Maten let me pull in the energy to change Goku; how the heck is the virus creating the same effect? There’s not enough fuel in a whole human body to play butterfly!_

Green-edged paper shifted on his shoulders, a papery shrug. : _Observe. Analyze_.:

“Out of sight?” Goku scratched just below the golden band of the holo-emitter, careful not to dislodge it even if no one was looking. “How about downstairs?”

_Son of a_ \- “There’s a downstairs?”

“Felt it when I came in after Gojyo.” Goku dove under a rickety desk, shoving and pulling a box or two until he unearthed one particular knothole in otherwise plain wood. “A big open space, right under....”

_Click_.

Part of the floor slid neatly aside, exposing a ramshackle set of stairs draped with more frilly undergarments, and at least two pairs of red boxers.

Sanzo rolled his eyes, and helped Goku haul the unconscious survivor down into a love nest turned hacker’s den. Though given there were two beds down here, too, he was willing to bet someone else crashed with Sha from time to time.

_Let’s hope they don’t come back anytime soon. That would be annoying_.

Though not as annoying or prone to gunfire as staying upstairs would have been. The Guard had a lot of bureaucrats cluttering up the upper ranks, but they weren’t dumb. If his temple-granted snoop programs had picked up someone fleeing the scene of a possible akuma attack-

It’d been hours since then. Odds were, the Guard should be tracking Hakuryuu’s likely line of travel right about... _now_.

* * *

_Frequency shifted, plates switched out, the little dragon fried the blood inside... think we’re good to go_. Gojyo swiped sweat off his forehead as he stood up from changing the plate-

Grabbed the front bumper and hung on, swaying, as the world went dizzy all over.

_Damn it! Jerk-priest said he’d killed this thing!_

No, a programmer’s memory grumpily pointed out, Sanzo had said he’d made it survivable. Not at all the same thing.

“Kyuu?”

Gojyo patted the furry head, gleaming white in the barest shreds of dawn. “Get inside and out of sight. I don’t like the feel of things out here....”

Which, of course, was when his own persacomm buzzed his wrist, as his perimeter alarms went off.

_More than one vehicle, and closing fast_ , Gojyo thought, almost throwing the startled dragon-drone inside. _If they’re military-specced, they know I had an alarm set up_.

Which was a common, purely reasonable homeowner’s precaution out here in the boonies. Most prospectors had theirs set up just like his; ignore single-vehicle traffic passing on the road, only bug you if something large with teeth or more than one unexpected guest decided to drop in. This could get sticky-

His cabin had a distinct absence of bloody sheets. And ice. And three unexpected guests.

_Damn it, they found my hideout!_ Gojyo had to pause, and toss more laundry over the burrowing dragon before telling it to hush. _No, wait, right now that’s a good thing. Right?_

No more time to waste. Gojyo grabbed a meat bun straight from the fridge, and headed back out to the Jeep with a toolkit and an innocent look-

“Guard! Hands in the air!”

Halfway to the Jeep, Gojyo halted, and tried not to swear. _They sent people in on foot, too? Sanzo’s not joking. This is seriously twisted_. “Oi! Can’t a guy get breakfast in peace on his own stake?”

“Keep them up, Mister.”

Helmets, nightvision visors, and very big guns. Gojyo tried not to sweat, and clenched his teeth against another wave of dizzy. “You’re on my property. _Why_.”

“Chemical contamination.”

And not a biofilter to be seen on anybody. Right. “First time I saw chemicals that needed to be _shot_ ,” Gojyo quipped.

Not a twitch under the visor. “Exposure causes dangerous hallucinations. Stay right there while we determine if the area is clear.”

With that many guns pointed at him only an idiot would do anything else. “Yeah, yeah; hurry up and do your little scan thing so I can get on with my job, okay? Minerals don’t mine themselves.”

That earned him a sneer as one of the uniforms brought out a bioscanner. Good. People who thought he was just another idiot prospector wouldn’t be looking for smuggled viral victims in the basement. He hoped.

The guy with the blinky lights went over Gojyo first. Gojyo rolled his eyes, and let them see it. _Nothing to worry about here, never touched a plague-carrying kind of good guy who might have killed me_....

“Clear, sir.”

“Are. You. Sure.”

Touchy, _touchy_ Guard guy. Gojyo made a note not to press that guy too hard. There was needling someone enough that they thought you were just another idiot, and then there was suicidal stupidity.

“No trace of the neurotoxin.” Another finger-fiddle on the gimmick. “And no skin breaches-”

“Hey!” Gojyo let his hands drop an inch, indignant; raised them back up real quick. “Are you poking my bodily integrity without a warrant? Even the Guard doesn’t get to void Privacy-”

He barely saw it coming. Just in time to shift his chin away from the worst of the butt-stroke. It left him reeling on the ground, jaw bruised, but not quite broken.

_“Stay down.”_

That chilled Gojyo, in a way even _man-eating monster virus_ hadn’t. Shangri-La’s Planetary Guard were the _good_ guys. They manned the lines against fires, went on search-and-rescue for lost kids, and filled stray shikigami full of lead. They didn’t attack citizens. Ever.

_Holy hell, what did I get myself into?_

And now he finally realized none of the uniforms had name tags. Oh, this day just kept getting better.

“...Nothing in the vehicle, either.”

“Damn,” the leader bit out. “We found contamination, we found tracks-”

_Eep_.

“Can’t be this Jeep, sir.” The scanner-guy’s voice cracked, a nervous laugh. “Plate says this one was stolen out of Tama a month ago.”

“Damn it, Banri,” Gojyo groaned. “Not again!”

Silence, as the leader absorbed that. Snorted. “Anyone else inside?”

Scanner like that, they’d know the answer. At least outside the basement. “He hasn’t been back in two weeks,” Gojyo said truthfully. “Swear I didn’t know about the Jeep.”

Which he hadn’t. He’d known about the plate. And a little programming jiggery-poke, and....

_If you’ve got nervous guys tearing the place apart to find something, give ‘em something to find_.

“If you see your roommate, keep an eye out,” the leader said stiffly. “He... may not be himself.”

“Ooookay,” Gojyo said slowly, watching the guys with all the guns form up and start melting back into the woods. Not good. “Whatever you’re after, it’d better be worth it when people sue your ass-”

Muzzle almost swallowing his nose. Shit.

“Get back to your _work_ ,” the captain said viciously. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

_Neither do you, pal. Neither do you_.

Gojyo sat on the cold ground until the last leaf quit rustling, glad he’d at least landed in a drier spot. Took a deep breath, stood up, and deliberately dusted himself off.

_Act normal. If they’re as keyed up as I think, they might not have bought it_.

Shrugging, he hauled his toolkit in and started wiping off mud, whistling as he worked. Got the worst of it off, wondering exactly how many sensors were peeping in on him now.

Smirked, and took another deep breath.

_“Oh, some like to ride wild Arabians, “And some folk say camels have sass; “What I like to ride is a fine blushing bride-”_

Grinning, Gojyo hoped they _were_ listening. He could keep this up for _hours_.

* * *

: _Prickle-poke. Prickle-poke_.:

It was the oddest feeling. Like friendly ferret-whiskers and Hakuryuu’s wing-claw and an annoying younger orphanage brat’s finger. And yet Cho would swear nothing was touching him, here in the odd dark of not-quite-dead.

“Goku.” Sanzo’s voice; muffled, annoyed, and oddly comforting. “Quit that.”

“But I want him to wake up already! So he knows we’re not scared of him.”

“Speak for yourself, monkey.”

Definitely Sha’s mutter, even if it was just as muffled. Like laying under thick blankets.

“Did you see Hakuryuu’s footage?” Sha went on.

“Yeah. So?”

“He’s awake already.” There was a distinctive, threatening _click_. “Cho. We don’t know if breaking you out would screw up parts you don’t want torn off. Feel up to cracking out yourself?”

_Cracking? What_ -

It was like reaching and listening at once; fingertips brushing the edge of a coin’s rattling spin in the dark. Something thick but breakable around him. Two-legged shapes a bit further away, bright with the electricity of living warmth. Two of those seemed human, but the smaller one writhed....

: _Awake? Yay! Come out, come hunt, come play!_ :

Eager as a wolf cub with a fresh bone. That had to be Goku.

_I’m alive. I’m... sane? I think?_

Sanzo had kept his promise. Time for a monster to keep his own.

It was tight, and there wasn’t much room for leverage. But whatever it was around him felt breakable as bread crust. All he had to do was push, and strain-

_Air!_

“O...kay,” Sha got out, staring wide-eyed with what was left of his metal pipe in hand. “You’re sure you whacked the virus?”

“Yes.” Sanzo took one long step forward, and offered his hand.

Shakily, Cho took it. _Claws_ , he thought, feeling them slide out a little at the tempting nearness of a human who smelled right-

“You get one clawing when you don’t know what you’re doing. Then I shoot you.” Sanzo’s tone might as well have been pointing out the salt was on _his_ side of the table, stop bothering him. “You will _not_ infect me, because as far as the Maten Sutra’s concerned I’m alien enough already. And it _does not like competition_.”

Oh dear. “I wasn’t thinking-”

“Exactly.” Sanzo made sure he was standing, not even glancing at naked, green-patterned tentacles, much less naked everything else. “Gojyo’s got a shower over this way. Your claws are infectious but the rest of you isn’t, so go ahead and swipe his soap.”

“And every day the priest hits new heights of asshole-dom,” Sha Gojyo snarked, deliberately putting the pipe down. “Yeah, get that gunk scrubbed off, you look worse than me on a three-day bender.” He shrugged, and pulled on a wry grin. “Oh, and you might say thank you. Cho Gonou’s a wanted man, something about multiple homicide counts somewhere over three figures. But Cho _Hakkai_ ’s got a clean record, thanks to Sanzo’s Temple monk-hackers and,” he buffed his nails on his t-shirt, “yours truly.”

Cho blinked. Took a moment to glance at Goku, no matter how cold and, well, _icky_ was the best word for how he felt. The youngster was still a teenager, he couldn’t take multiple homicide well....

: _Relief_ ,: shimmered from the young man. : _Hakkai-alive, sane. Not bleeding. Not in the lab!_ :

Sanzo’s paper fan came down on Goku’s head like a crack of thunder. “Use words, monkey!”

“Oww... but Sanzo! _You_ can hear me.”

“The sutra can. I can’t.” There was a crease between the priest’s brows, like the oncoming storm of a massive headache. “If the pair of you want to talk that way, fine, but stop _shouting_.”

“I wasn’t shouting!” Goku ducked. “Much?”

“Come on, they can bring half the house down when they get going.” Gojyo beckoned him over to a side door that opened into a sparse but functional bathroom, with only a little stubborn gray mildew clinging to the shower corners. “Get clean, Sanzo says he’s got something to hide you and we might have to bug out of here in a hurry. I keep playing innocent lowlife criminal for the Guard patrols that sweep through here, but I don’t think they’re buying it.” He grimaced, eyes bloodshot. “From what Sanzo told me... well, I wouldn’t buy it either. This is a nightmare. Or a bad movie on the sci-fi holo channel. Maybe both.”

“What Sanzo-?” Cho cut himself off, and scrambled over the edge of the tub. “Never mind. You can tell me everything after we’re on our way- Wait. Is Hakuryuu-?”

“Upstairs.” Gojyo leaned against the sink, tension easing out of bare shoulders as Cho turned the hot water on. “We tried to explain what was going on, and he’s a damn advanced AI, but we weren’t sure how he’d take you waking up if you weren’t, you know....”

“Sane?” Cho finished, relieved to find out that honest soap did work on this slime. Even on green-and-brown furred tentacles... and why he wasn’t screaming at those, he had no idea. Though the hot water felt _very_ nice. “I’m... not actually sure I am, yet.”

“Huh. Fair.” Gojyo cleared his throat, dark hair damp from the steam. “Um. When Hakuryuu was trying to talk me into helping you, he mentioned his owner was....” His fist hit the wall with surprising force; pale blue paint cracked. “Ah, damn it, I’m no good at this. You need to talk?”

_Hakuryuu’s... Kanan. Oh_. “No,” Cho whispered, pain slicing his heart like an icy razor. “No, I... can’t. Yet.”

“Okay,” Gojyo breathed out, thumping back against the sink. “Don’t know if it means much, but - I’m sorry. Nobody should... ah, man. We’re in the middle of a horror movie, and our very own holy roller carries a gun instead of prayer beads. This _sucks_.”

Slime gone, thank goodness. Hair... oh. That was _very_ odd. Cho worked up a lather first, then gingerly rinsed it through the tingly strands. Not black anymore, but a green so dark it’d pass for that shade in most light. Though that didn’t even begin to handle how they’d hide the tentacles. Or the ears. Or the _claws_.

_Not important now_. “You’re a very kind person.”

Gojyo almost slid off the sink; grabbed white porcelain to stay upright. “Are you kidding me?”

“You tried to help a stranger in terrible trouble,” Cho pointed out. _Hakkai. I should try to start thinking of myself that way, if they went to the trouble of making the IDs_. “And now you’re upset because you can’t do more than you have. You are kind. I’m glad to have met you.” Which was... surprising.

Or possibly not, because he was fixed on Gojyo and Sanzo and even Goku’s prickles of : _Aw, just wanted to play_ ,: to keep himself _distracted_. From the emptiness. From the silence. From that so-graceful spin and blood....

“Yeah, well, don’t be too glad,” Gojyo’s voice broke in on him. “We get somewhere we can stop to breathe without looking over our shoulders, we’re going to have a little talk about coughing on people. Last few days have been _weird_.”

Cho Hakkai raised an eyebrow; winced, as stray soap stung and he had to splash water in his eyes. “Unusual how?”

“Didn’t say unusual, I said _weird_. This stuff beat unusual up, stole its lunch money, and sent it crying home to Mommy. I keep thinking I can hear....” Gojyo grimaced. “Ah hell. No good way to say this. I caught the damn virus picking you up. Only Sanzo could swat mine. Or - well, most of it.” A shrug. “Been sick as a dog without even getting a fun night out. And the Guard’s got bio-scanners and I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to pass them.”

Cho flinched. “I’m sor-”

“It is not your fault.” Gojyo glowered at him. “I’m just telling you ‘cause Sanzo said some maniac set this thing loose. And I want in on killing his ass. Got it?”

“I... see. I think.” And he’d been right; Gojyo _was_ kind. Crude, yes, but kind.

_And I am a greedy man, and will take all the kindness I can find_ , Cho reflected. _When the shock really hits me, I’m going to need it_.

Because it hadn’t hit him. Not yet. He had tentacles, one of them currently absently patting the shower curtain while another was feeling over the shampoo bottle and the lower two were poking at warm water, and the most reaction he could seem to rouse was, _that feels interesting_.

Which made him wonder if it was normal shock, or some effect of the virus. Gojyo seemed to be taking his current state far too well-

“Don’t want to rush you, but,” Gojyo patted green and dark cloth on the sink counter. “Clothes. Think they’ll fit. Mostly.”

“Is there a specific reason to rush?” Cho frowned, turning off the water and taking Gojyo’s offered towel.

“No, but... Sanzo’s twitchy.” The hacker eyed the bathroom door. “Could be he’s just paranoid. Then again, they are out to get him.”

There wasn’t nearly enough towel to cover everything at once. Though it was interesting trying to wrap the tentacles in with the rest of him. “You mean, out to get Goku,” Cho corrected him.

“I don’t think so,” Gojyo shook his head. “Sure, Goku’s youkai, I bet they’d shoot him if they caught him. But Sanzo’s... sweet mother of mercy. Did you think about what that sutra of his did?”

He’d barely had time to, between falling unconscious and now, but- oh. “It rewrote an entire virus,” Cho stated. “ _Inside_ an infected host.”

“Entire alien virus,” Gojyo nodded. “And I think I really want to hide under a bed now. Only that’d just mean the evil alien baddies could drag me out whenever they wanted.”

Cho started toweling faster. “This is going to be a very interesting explanation, isn’t it?”

“I think we can mix explaining and breakfast.” Gojyo cast him a relatively polite look askance while he grabbed clothes; it never dipped below the chest, waving tentacles or not. “You’ve been out for three days. You’ve got to be as starved as the kid.”

Cho felt his stomach rumble, and brushed back nervous hair. “I was trying not to think about it? The way the youkai referred to humans, I didn’t want to-”

“Chow down on hash and eggs?” Gojyo cut him off. “Yeah, I get it, bachelor cooking. Kiss of death. Make a guy feel wanted.”

Compared to what he’d feared he was craving, hash and eggs sounded absolutely wonderful. “I think I could stand it. Just this once.” Hakkai pulled on the loose long-sleeved green shirt; it wasn’t quite roomy enough to wrap his tentacles around him under it, but it fit otherwise. He’d just have to get creative in sewing alterations. “Although if you make a custom of not having fruit in the house, we’ll be having words.”

“Oi!”

The stairs and trapdoor up were an interesting touch. Hakkai tried to focus on the details of wood and subtle polymer bracing, rather than think about why Goku was behind him, _between_ him and Sanzo as they all climbed up into the sun-

“Kyuu!”

A strange brunette in violet silk and gold jewelry let Hakuryuu’s drone launch from her hands, the little dragon circling Hakkai as if it weren’t sure where to land. “Well, well. Good morning.”

“Not that I’m ever sorry to see a lovely lady,” Gojyo tossed back his hair with a wide smile, “but I know I had the alarms up. So how did you get in here?”

“Never mind how,” Sanzo said sourly. “ _What_ are you doing here?”

“What does it look like?” The brunette sat at Gojyo’s table graciously as if taking a throne, long-nailed fingers weaving together. “Being merciful and compassionate.”

“Um.” Gojyo edged behind Goku, even as the youngster grinned.

“Aw, you taught him about that already!” The brunette beamed. “You really are a good Sanzo.”

“Aunt Kanzeon!” Goku shoved in between silk and the table, hugging with every visible limb and all the ones Hakkai couldn’t quite see. “Wow, have we got a lot to tell you! There’s all these Guards sneaking around, and Gojyo’s even sneakier, and - oh! This is Hakkai.”

_Kanzeon?_ Hakkai thought, holding out an arm for Hakuryuu to perch. The dragon landed, but wouldn’t settle, cheeping and kyuuing as if his electronic heart had broken. _Like the kami?_

“Kanzeon?” Gojyo echoed his thought. “Wait, that temple you said you were from, in Chang’an....”

“Is mine,” Kanzeon smiled, petting Goku’s hair even as some of it twined around her fingers. “Well, well; this outbreak is a bit different from the last, isn’t it? You’re going to need to move faster next time.”

Arm still out for Hakuryuu, Hakkai froze. Traded a stunned look with Gojyo. _The Temple is hers? But that means_ -

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Sanzo said bluntly. “Do we have any idea how many of these youkai got away?”

“Probably too many,” the kami said candidly. “I’ve spoken with the Sanbutsushin. We’re informing the starports to put a quarantine lockdown on travel.”

_Or else_ , Hakkai heard; steel hidden under silk. Which made him square his shoulders and step forward, awed by what he was seeing or not. “With all due respect, Honored Bosatsu - what gives you the right?”

“Nothing at all,” the kami shrugged. “This is a human problem, and humans ought to take care of it. But I don’t think the rest of your species should suffer just because whoever’s in charge of figuring out this mess is slow on the uptake. Let’s keep this infection to one planet, if we can.”

_Infection_. Hakkai winced. _That’s what I am now_ -

“Easy.” Kanzeon’s voice was gentler now; soothing, as se held out an arm for Hakuryuu to settle on and chirp sadly. “What you are now seems a bit _impulsive_ , but it’s certainly viable. There’s no reason to think you’re evil, Cho Hakkai. Dangerous, yes. But all my Sanzos are dangerous, and they’re the farthest thing from evil in the world.” Se tapped Hakuryuu on the nose. “And you can just relax. You know that’s your Hakkai, and I know he is. We can fix your parameters, if you let me.”

“Cheep!”

“How?” Hakkai had to ask, startled. “He’s not supposed to be hackable in that respect. And my biometrics are, well....”

“Biometrics,” Kanzeon waved a dismissive hand. “Just a way energy’s expressed in the world.” Se bent an amused gaze on an indignant dragon. “And I wouldn’t dream of hacking you, any more than I’d toy with Sanzo’s memory. I can just give you an alternative biometric for your owner. And the sensors to use it.”

“Kyuu?” The dragon tilted his head, then nodded.

“Sensors?” Hakkai had to ask, somehow terrified.

“You might want to cover your eyes,” Sanzo stated. “Se likes to be flashy.”

That earned him a wicked grin. “And you don’t like to be flashy enough.”

Hakkai traded another glance with Gojyo, both of them adding up stark white robes, black belt, and that terrifying rustle of the sutra on Sanzo’s shoulders. Gojyo spread empty hands, as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

_This isn’t what I thought a kami would be like_. Hakkai shielded his eyes as a golden glow lit Kanzeon’s hands, spreading over white fur. Odd; why were the shadows being cast that way-

_Oh_.

Shifting on Sanzo’s shoulders like wind-blown leaves, the sutra echoed the glow, before the priest growled and tapped paper with his finger. “Quit that.”

“Tch. Maten’s just being friendly,” Kanzeon remarked, not taking hir eyes off Hakuryuu as the glow intensified. “You really ought to learn to do this yourself.”

“Human, remember?” One blond brow lifted, just enough to show _someone_ did not give a damn. “I haven’t got the wiring to pull off energy-manipulation on that level.”

“Hmm.”

“Don’t ‘hmm’ me, hag. I like my brain the way it is. Unfried.”

“Aww, too bad,” Goku heaved a sigh, watching with wide eyes. “It’s tingly!”

“It is,” Hakkai murmured, as Gojyo gave the youngster a look askance. Drinking in that _sense_ that was like nothing else he’d ever felt before; like standing next to a warm stove, yet refreshing as dipping toes in cool water on a summer’s day. “It’s... not like feeling walls, or a person. But it’s solid- no, that’s not the right word. It - feels as though I could touch it?”

“You probably can,” Kanzeon mused. “And if you can... I want to look at you later.” Hir eyes half-closed, whispering something he couldn’t quite hear-

The glow settled into Hakuryuu’s bones. The dragon shook himself, more fluid than the drone had ever moved before. “Kyuu?”

Red eyes found Hakkai’s, and he found himself with an armful of excited dragon. “I’m all right,” he murmured, as warm fur rubbed along his face, horns thumping against his cheekbone. “I’m okay... you’re _warm_.”

“Well, of course he is.” The kami smirked. “Just because he wasn’t originally organic, doesn’t mean he can’t be alive. And if you’re going to sneak up on more monsters, you’ll have better luck if they can’t sense something electronic in the sky.”

“Cheep!”

_Hakuryuu is... alive_. Hakkai let the dragon settle on the shoulder of his shirt, not sure what to say or do or even smile next. The kind of power the kami had just wielded with a wave of hir hands....

“Se does that on purpose.” Sanzo’s murmur was barely audible as the priest bent his head to eye the dragon. “Stand up to hir right from the start, or se’ll run right over you.”

That sounded like the voice of experience. Though Hakkai couldn’t picture Sanzo being run over by anyone.

At the moment, surrounded by Sanzo’s scent, he was trying not to picture anything. It wasn’t as frantic, as burning a need as it’d been before he’d lost consciousness. But Sanzo still smelled so right-

“So now can we have breakfast?” Goku jumped up and headed for the fridge, almost snatching a strip of cold bacon right out of a pan before Gojyo slapped his hand. “I’m starving!”

“Says the bottomless pit,” Sanzo grumbled, stepping away in a waft of disgruntled air. “We’d better head out soon, you’re eating Gojyo out of his supplies.”

“Eh, I can buy more. Might as well eat up the perishables anyway. Not sure when I’ll be back,” Gojyo said practically. “Hey, Hakkai. Hakuryuu won’t mind hauling some computer stuff with us, will he? I’d kind of like to not leave it lying around. Just in case.”

Given that was likely the equipment Gojyo’d used to create a new and fake identity, Hakkai wasn’t fond of leaving it around either. “I... don’t think it will be a problem?” He stroked white fur; was it softer, or was his sense of touch different, too? “What do you think, little one?”

“Kyuu.” Another head-butt, with the faintest brush of : _affection, silly to worry, my-person!_ :

Goku’s head whipped around, unruly brown hair lifting like static. “Hey! I heard that!”

“So did I,” Hakkai managed, wide-eyed. “New sensors... you gave Hakuryuu the equipment to perceive this- what _is_ it, that we’re feeling?”

“Well, among the kami, we call it aural sense,” Kanzeon mused. “You and Goku seem to range over a few different frequencies from what my people normally use, but there’s an interesting amount of overlap.” And that was a _dangerous_ grin. “Enough that a properly attentive Sanzo ought to be able to help you work out what you are, and what you can do. Even if he does like his brain so woefully unfried. It ought to be fun watching you experiment.” Se stepped back-

Hakkai started, a cool absence washing through his senses where _sun-bright-and-warm_ had been.

“Aww.” Goku crossed his arms and blew out a breath. “I wanted Aunt to play with us. Se’s really good at hunt and hide!”

Gojyo shook himself, pan slinging sideways before he twisted it back up to save the bacon. “Where did she _go?_ ”

“Wherever the hell se wants.” Sanzo didn’t even glance at now-empty air, one hand fishing bits of silver out of his sleeve. “Put these on. They won’t be worth a damn if you reach out and strangle someone, but so long as you’re a few feet away the holo-emitters should hide you as well as they do Goku.”

Hakkai held that iron gaze, and released a slow breath. _Well. This is a test_.

Mustering his will, he plucked silver off the black silk armor guarding Sanzo’s palms. He didn’t trust himself to touch skin.

Trying to appear casual, Hakkai clipped the cuffs onto his ear.

It was like a veil of finest gossamer between his aural sense and the world. He could still : _feel_ : through it, but the hologram was a perceptible layer around him.

“How very odd.” Hakkai blinked, turning his attention to the waver of distortion hiding Goku’s tentacles. He could sense the youngster’s own cloak of light from here, as if drifting his fingertips across sheer rayon. “If we can feel the holograms-”

“Akuma and the others prob’ly can, too,” Goku agreed. “But that’s good! We want ‘em to come after us first.”

“That will make killing them easier, yes,” Hakkai reflected, heading for Gojyo’s fridge to see what else they might clear out quickly. Hmm. Applesauce? It was a fruit, after all. “Is your friend going to worry if he finds the cupboard bare, Gojyo?”

“Banri would live off takeout, if he could.” Gojyo blinked at Hakkai again; shook his head, and set the pan onto the stove to start sizzling. “And I haven’t heard anything from him in days. Either he’s okay and lifting cars somewhere a thousand miles from here... or he’s not.” The hacker’s jaw set. “You can kill these things? How, if bullets don’t stop ‘em?”  

“Psychokinetic energy.”

_Psychokinetic- oh. Oh my, how did that happen?_ Hakkai set his jar on the table with a large spoon, one brow raised at the priest. “And you said what you shoot, stays shot.”

Sanzo scowled at him.

Hakkai smiled. “How lucky I am, to be surrounded by such _interesting_ people.”

Goku huffed a relieved breath, and gazed up at Sanzo. “I _told_ you it’d be okay! They’re different, and you’re different, and it’ll _work_.” A cheeky grin. “Besides. The first time they feel you shoot, they’ll figure it out.”

“Wait, wait,” Gojyo was flipping bacon fast, eyeing the three of them between slices. “Psychokinetic energy? I thought that was in holovids, or halfway across known space with... well, damn. You’re a _Quincy?_ ”

Violet eyes looked aside. “The temples don’t talk about it much. But members of the bloodline turned up here back when Shangri-La was first settled. People who have some of the abilities tend to keep quiet.”

And yet, that wasn’t quite a yes, Hakkai noted. But if Sanzo wasn’t a Quincy - then what was he?

_I want to find out_.

Displacement behavior, a counselor would likely say. A distraction to keep grief at bay. Unhealthy.

_I will take all the distractions I can beg, borrow, or steal_ , Hakkai thought, ladling out a bowl of applesauce for Goku’s growling stomach while the whacks of Sanzo’s paper fan let Gojyo parcel out the meat fairly. _I need to stay alive. Long enough to get answers_.  

_I need to see who’s still alive in Copper Village. And who shouldn’t be_.

* * *

_This is a bad idea in the history of bad ideas_.

Hidden in the brush of a hillside with what were apparently now _his_ idiots, Sanzo glared down on Copper Village and the mini-armed invasion occupying the place. At the moment he’d identified two armed checkpoints, at least four separate drones running airborne visuals, and the kind of high-powered rifles usually reserved for putting down a land behemoth gone crazy in musth. He’d also ID’d at least three soldiers armed with trank rifles, which did not make him feel any better.

“That really doesn’t look good,” Gojyo summed up.

“They’re hunting with the youkai?” Goku said in disbelief. “How could they?”

“Wait, you think- _what?_ ” Gojyo hissed. “Come on, they’re looking for infected people-”

“And they’re currently set up inside an outbreak zone.” Hakkai nudged the sunglasses he’d lifted off Gojyo’s bookcase. “I’m a historian, not a doctor, certainly not a tactician... but historically speaking, you don’t do that if you think you’ll fall prey to the infection. Or the locals.”

Sanzo glared at the nearest checkpoint, and made a decision. “Be ready to move. I need to... try something.”

Hands folded together, he closed his eyes, and began a whispered chant.

_Reach out. And see_.

The Maten had been right, after all; he did have some ability to pick up on the auras around him. Training, and needing to thwack Goku when the kid tried to pulse too close to government sensors, had let him start to extend his range. It hadn’t quite fried his brain. Yet.

Goku, burning like a fire. Hakkai, silvery and slippery as waterfall spray. Even Gojyo had a bit of sparkle, oddly like neon and stripper glitter.

_Reach farther_.

Humans showed up, like candle-flames in the dark. Worry, fear, determination....

A spike of fear; and the flame-crackle of what must be one of the new youkai, tinged with _hunger_.

Hunger, and wariness. Hard to tell who was who at this distance, but he couldn’t feel the hot rush of human adrenaline, or the crystal-clear glee he knew from Goku hunting a squirrel for breakfast.

_Nerves. Anger. No attack. Why?_

“Sanzo.” Goku, quiet and serious. “Sanzo, we gotta _go_.”

Sanzo blinked, and deliberately avoided shaking his head. It’d only make the throbbing worse.

Gojyo and Hakkai were already halfway back to the Jeep, fading through the underbrush with a decent amount of skill for non-Scouts. Sanzo slipped after them, letting Goku bring up the rear. The kid was smaller, faster, and lethal enough to leave no witnesses if they were caught.

_And we can’t afford to be caught_.

“Okay,” Gojyo said quietly, as they settled into the Jeep and Hakkai brought the engine up on silent mode. “One, what did you just do? Two - what the hell is going _on?_ ”

Sanzo held up a hand. “Hakkai first. Is there anyone left in that town you give a damn about if they’re still alive?”

“I....” The youkai licked his lips, obviously nervous. “If my students stayed away - no. Not really.”

“Then we get the hell out of here, for now,” Sanzo stated. “Pick a direction and start driving. I want to get to Chang’an, eventually.” He leaned back against the seatrest. “I’ll tell you what I know. It’s not much.”

“Spooky praying,” Gojyo said darkly.

“I’m a Sanzo,” Sanzo smirked. “It has a few interesting perks.”

“Sanzoooo.” He could hear the roll of Goku’s eyes all the way from the backseat.

“What?”

“He means he doesn’t like to talk about it,” Goku huffed. “I told you, Sanzo’s different. A little like us, even if he is human. He can feel where people are. An’ akuma, too.”

Gojyo snorted, long legs apparently knocking against the back of Hakkai’s seat. “What do you mean _us_ , monkey-demon?”

“Hey!” Fingers curled, Goku lunged-

_Thwack! Thwack!_

Sanzo shook out his harisen, ignoring the startled look on Gojyo’s face as the hacker rubbed his own welt. “He’s not a demon, he’s a _brat_. You want to hear this or not?”

“I certainly do.” Hakkai tilted his head as Hakuryuu nibbled on his cuff-free ear, one tentacle almost visible as a waver holding the dragon on his shoulder. “You say someone deliberately set this infection loose?”

“That’s what I thought. With those soldiers back there - looks like we’re not dealing with anything as sane as just a deliberate outbreak.” Sanzo settled back into his seat, determined not to show even the hint of a wince. “A few months ago, akuma attacked Momijizan....”

He laid out the details, blunt and spare. What he’d seen akuma do. How many lives they’d taken. Camouflage skin, inhuman speed and strength, the aural sense that let the monsters read and shape the world in some of the ways kami could. How youkai, and probably akuma, were created; the viruses somehow pulling on the same source of energy kami used for teleportation to reshape a once-human body in mere days. And how he’d guessed he and the sutra might be able to crack this new virus into Hakkai’s more tame form, based on what they’d managed for the one half-grown akuma who’d managed to fight viral instincts, at least long enough to go after a legitimate threat....

Some things, though, they didn’t need to know.

_I used to have a better temper than this. I used to be less quick on the trigger_.

Which was saying something, for a Frontier Scout. But when he’d been a scout, he hadn’t been a _parent_.

_Damn. Idiot. Monkey. Stings_.

: _Cubs need a guardian_.:

Sanzo mentally rolled his eyes at the sutra. _I brought him home, now I’ve got to keep him?_

: _Kanzeon Bosatsu wishes to observe youkai for species viability. Social behavior necessary component._ :

Oh, he’d just _bet_ se did. Se wasn’t the one stuck pounding civilized behavior into a kid with _venomous claws_.

Sanzo still remembered the look on Kanzeon’s face when se’d brought him a thorough analysis of Goku’s various tentacle nematocysts. Most of them were toxic; plenty of those were lethal. But the ones that’d gotten him? The kami had almost busted a gut laughing.

_Bonding hormones. Son of a_....

It wasn’t quite human oxytocin. But apparently it was close enough. Goku hadn’t been cuddling just to get warm. The little monkey had instinctively been out to snag a family.

_Gods damn it all, universe! I’m the worst person for this job_.

Problem was, there literally _wasn’t_ anyone else. If Goku slipped with his claws - and damn it, he was still a kid, slips happened - _Sanzo_ wouldn’t die from it. Any other foster parent would be succumbing to the virus, or dead.

_Question is, which virus? I_ think _Hakkai’s got the same kind as Goku, now. We’ll have to let him claw a sample jar to check. But what he was infected with_....

“So, whoever let the akuma loose, has now unleashed the youkai as a second virus.” Hakkai’s voice was calm, but the : _find monster and kill it!_ : radiating from him was enough to make Sanzo’s trigger finger twitch. “And Goku and I have a third?”

“I think you have the second,” Sanzo corrected him. “From what the Maten could find, what hit your town looks like someone took Goku’s virus, recombined it with the akuma strain and tweaked it some more for kicks. They grabbed what kami technology tamed, and messed it up even worse.”

“Worse?” Hakkai’s eyes went distant a moment, peering into memory. “Hmm. Intelligent cannibalistic monsters, versus intelligent cannibalistic monsters that still remember being human and are deliberately planning to increase their... clan. Yes, definitely worse.”

“So you fixed this thing once, and they turned it rabid-feral all over again?” Gojyo’s fingers gripped the shoulder of Hakkai’s seat as he glared out the windshield. “Who the hell is that crazy?”

Sanzo tapped his persacomm, and brought up one of the few images he’d been able to snag from his research. Dark hair, glasses, stubble, and a certain crazy glint in the eyes, even on a still flatpic. “I don’t have a name. But this is the guy I walked past at Momijizan.”

“Really.” A thin smile graced Hakkai’s face.

“ _Don’t_ do anything stupid,” Sanzo warned him. “I haven’t got a name, but I’ve tracked down some of who he’s working for. They call themselves _Minus Wave_.”

Gojyo’s head shot up, all trace of slouch gone. “You’re messing with them? Are you nuts, or are you just allergic to breathing?”

Hakkai’s fingers tightened on the wheel. “Who are the Minus Wave?”

“Officially, nobody,” Gojyo stated, gaze dipping to tense shoulders for just a flicker of lazy eyelids. “On the Dark Net... some very rich, very powerful guys scattered through the Satrapy. They’re supposed to have this _thing_ about hacking kami tech for the good of humanity-” The hacker cut himself off, eyes wide.

“And this virus allows its victims to access energy in a similar fashion to the kami.” Hakkai’s voice was very, very quiet. “Which would be a major step in understanding their technology.”

“No, really?” Gojyo shuddered. “And all they’ve got to do is play around with a man-eating virus to get it. Great. I guess the rich really are different.”

“In this case the rich are crazy,” Sanzo said darkly. “They’re playing around with an alien virus, one even the kami don’t know where it came from, and it’s _intelligent_. Right now I’m hoping they haven’t spread it anywhere else, or humanity is screwed.”

This time Hakkai blinked. “Alien?”

“Wait, what?” Gojyo said, hard on his heels. “Alien? You mean _alien_ alien? Not just something kami, or something the Minus Wave dug up out of some weird crevice on Shangri-La? Actual _alien?_ ”

“Alien. High-tech. And the genes aren’t from any ecosystem humans or kami have ever run into,” Sanzo stated. The Maten had been very firm on that last. “First contact with the kami worked out. Looks like humanity’s second contact is trying to _eat us alive_.”

Hakkai was slowing the Jeep, shoulders bunched tight. “If... if parts of us are from something inimical to human beings-”

Oh, hell no. _Thwack!_

Green eyes stared at him.

“Pull over,” Sanzo directed, folding the harisen back into his sleeve. “I want you to _listen_ to me.”

It took Hakkai a few minutes to find a sheltered pull-off someone had reinforced with a bit of gravel. Good. That meant Sanzo had time to muster his argument, and hopefully get it right.

_I saved his life. I’m not going to let the idiot kill himself out of some misplaced sense of sacrifice._

_I’ve seen too many dead already_.

“Every damn human that ever lived is _inimical to human beings_ ,” Sanzo stated. “It’s part of our history. Hell, it’s part of our DNA. You think what the youkai did was horrible? Human beings kill. Rape. Cannibalize. If all you look at is genes, we’re _all_ monsters.”

_I should know. I’m a made-to-order monster_.

“You’re Cho Hakkai. Youkai. And we don’t even know what that means yet,” Sanzo went on. “But you are going to hear this, if I have to beat it through your regenerating skull. _You are not your DNA_.” One slow breath. Two. “You’re Cho Hakkai. And if I have to teach you how to be human all over again - I’ve already got a monkey to keep busy. You get to _help_.” He lifted one shoulder, a deliberate shrug of deadly green-and-white paper. “And you’re forgetting something.” He jabbed a thumb toward Gojyo. “Odds are, _he_ gets a refresher course, too.”

“Oi!”

: _Giggles_ : shimmered from behind him, as Goku poked his seatmate. “I _told_ you Hakkai would be okay.” He straightened, gold eyes serious. “You are, right? You still feel sad. I guess... I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t _remember_ having anybody before Sanzo.”

“Sad.” Hakkai blinked at the sunlight off wind-tossed branches. “I... yes. That.” He winced. “How human is it to just run away from the dead?”

“Very, when you’re trying to stay alive.” Sanzo eyed the slump of resigned misery in the driver’s seat, untouched even by pensive dragon chirps, and flung open his door. “Come on.”

The breeze was just starting to warm, full of sunlight and hints of forest life; quick chips of a tree-rat trio courting, a faint lemony tang that meant something had just been browsing on a limon tree before they’d pulled up. Sanzo glanced low and high, the better to pick up on any spider-bears not smart enough to avoid a human vehicle, then seated himself on the Jeep’s hood.

_I really, really hate the frills_.

Didn’t stop him from carrying the crown up his sleeve, silken veils and all. Maybe _he_ didn’t believe, but Koumyou had.

_And someone needs to throw Hakkai a lifeline, before he breaks_.

“Just so you know,” Sanzo stated, as Goku relaxed and his two new idiots stared at the obnoxiously ostentatious gold crown he’d just settled on his head, “I chant for the living.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> musth - highly aggressive behavior in male elephants in breeding season.


	4. Kougaiji's Bad Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He should have let Dokugakuji shoot Nii. Kougaiji regrets that already.

_“But what I like to ride is a sweet blushing bride,  
“With lightning tattooed on her-”_

“Ugh.” Rolling his eyes, Nii Jianyi switched the surveillance recording off, and went back to his computer shuffling of various genomes. The white fluff of his stuffed bunny slumped on the corner of his desk, one ear flopped as if it were grateful to be spared more salacious verses. “Nobody that crude could be hiding something.”

 _You should talk_ , Kougaiji thought, keeping the scowl off his face by an effort of will. He might be Director Daluhai’s supposed heir, but as far as Minus Wave was concerned he was still just a low-level xeno-tech researcher, trying to tease secrets of teleportation out of Shangri-La’s lore and a set of old kami bangles. While Gyokumen Koushu’s hand-picked psycho-geneticist was a bona fide, no holds barred genius, who’d advanced their understanding of kami energy and technology decades ahead of the rest of the Satrapy.

How Nii had gotten there, though.... Kougaiji’d thought he’d known the worst of it. The latest evidence to stray near his desk proved he’d been pitifully naive. “The report said one of the outbreak victims might have gotten outside the containment perimeter.”

“Hmm. Looks like. They only found some mud with blood.” Nii waved an absent hand. “Don’t worry. Either he’s dead - and he probably _is_ dead, even a transformation won’t heal them if they bleed out first - or... he’ll be back.” A smirk, as he rotated a complicated chemical profile on his monitor. “Our lures will make sure of that.”

Silver chimed as Kougaiji tried not to clench his fists, thinking of exactly how Nii might know how much blood-loss an infected person could survive. Much less how effective these... lures might be.

 _This is illegal. This is_ insane.

Given he’d just come back from a three-month research trip off-planet to find his mother in stasis, his father’s condition top-secret, his step-mother locked in a lab and not answering his messages, and Nii poking a virus that mutated people, he had to find out _how_ insane. Because Lirin was still in one piece and he had to know if he just needed to get her out of Nii’s reach, or completely off the planet.

...Then again, this was Nii. He’d better plan for off the planet. And never mind Koushu was still Lirin’s legal guardian. Dokugakuji was _his_ bodyguard, the man knew ways to move around legalities and official documents; even if right now he was caught in one of Security’s inevitable paperwork snarls. And once they showed Yaone some of what he’d found - the biochemist had taken to his half-sister like a young aunt. She’d help him sedate Lirin to smuggle her out, if that’s what it took.

 _Information first_ , Kougaiji told himself. “Any progress on-”

“Your parents?” Nii tapped out a cigarette, lit it; let his eyes drift over to a _new message_ alert on his monitor, and grinned. “Why don’t I let Lady Gyokumen fill you in?”

Kougaiji eyed that grin, and knew Dokugakuji would want to punch it in the face. _I have a bad feeling about this_.

* * *

“My son. How good it is to see you again.”

 _You’re no mother of mine_. Kougaiji narrowed his eyes at the deep shadows cloaking Koushu’s chair. Normally his father’s wife had this reception room lit with her as the expensively-dressed star. Then again, she was a researcher herself, and vain about being caught out with even a hint of sleepless nights under her eyes. “Let’s get to the point. What’s going on around here? Why does Nii have those... things, as research subjects, instead of calling in the Planetary Guard with flamethrowers?”

“Things?” Koushu _tch_ ed. “How plebian. Youkai are beautiful. Fast, dangerous, almost unkillable; with the senses to read energy like humans read the morning blogs. They’ll be our future. And the kami, arrogant species that they are, will never see it coming.”

... _Sanity has left the building_. Kougaiji took a subtle deep breath, the way Dokugakuji had showed him; enough to get blood flowing, not enough to panic. Panic might kill. “And what does my father think of this?”

Her lips curved; a shadowed smile. “My, my; I’m surprised you even ask. You know his medical condition. It took a turn for the worse. Recently.”

Kougaiji wished he could say he was surprised. Genetic scans didn’t catch everything, and every new planet humanity contacted had its own quirky interactions with human biology. Autoimmune reactions might not be automatically lethal, but even with the best recent medicine, Director Daluhai had been looking at a lifespan decades shorter than the norm.

 _But he shouldn’t have gone downhill this fast_. “I’d like to see him.”

He didn’t want to do anything of the sort. But asking would give Koushu the idea she had leverage to deny it, and so long as she was dangling that like a feather for a cat, she might be distracted from what he was _really_ after.

“Hmm.” A finger tapped against her lips, long nail casting back razor points of light. “How about... no.”

Kougaiji tensed. Flat-out denial? That wasn’t normal.

 _Get out. Get out, now_.

“You really are like your father, you know,” Koushu mused. “Both of you think you hide everything, but for someone who knows your tells... it’s written clear as day.” She chuckled. “Though I do have a bit of an advantage, poor boy. You have no idea how much your emotions show in your aura. The moment you walk out that door, you’d be right on the comms to help, wouldn’t you? If you could find any. Doku’s going to be busy for a few days, I’m afraid. It should be long enough.” She stood, stepping into the light.

Kougaiji froze, unable to believe what his eyes were telling him. Maybe it was makeup, turning skin porcelain-pale and hair a dark green-black. Special effects, or holo-emitters hidden in the blue silk kimono, giving the image of elegant pointed ears and cat-slit brown eyes. Or maybe someone had pumped in hallucinogens when he wasn’t looking, because out of slits in fine blue silk waved four arm-long, razor-toothed tentacles.

“I told you we were beautiful,” Gyokumen Koushu smiled. “But I do want to make sure this is perfect for your father. And, well... we can’t have you leaving us now, can we?”

The sting in his neck was sharp, cold, and made his knees fold like hot agar. Someone caught him-

Kougaiji looked up at Nii’s grin, and wished the scientist had let him hit the floor.

Nii let him slide the rest of the way down, still grinning. “Don’t worry, little prince. This isn’t the feral shot. I got this variant straight from a Buddhist priest.” A wider smirk. “Or maybe his demon. Careless, careless Genjyo. Leave me the chip so I’d think Nine was dead? Should have wiped all the DNA off it first....”

Nii’s gloating faded out, and the world spun away.

* * *

_Where the hell could he be?_

Dokugakuji tangled some fingers in his short dark hair, and tried not to yank. Three days. Three days since he’d been held up by some bureaucratic nit-picker in Security for just half an hour about not having the very latest ID badge when he’d just gotten back to the planet, and Kougaiji had gone poof.

Not officially poof, of course. Koushu and Professor Huang and everyone down to the janitor swore that Kougaiji wasn’t missing, no need to call the cops, no problem. He just wasn’t _here_. Wherever here happened to be at the time.

 _The hell he’s not_ , Dokugakuji thought darkly. _Kou knows better than to go places without security. Like it or not he’s the Director’s son, and there’s always some idiot who thinks this time kidnapping might pay off in more than dead bodies_.

The thump on his little office door was familiar. The speed Yaone came through it afterward wasn’t. Biochemistry and its various effects on potential psychokinesis were her things, and neither of them worked well with panic. “The files. Kou. Found something - found Nii-”

Panic. Definitely. Dokugakuji grabbed her and dragged her in, glad he’d swept for bugs again this morning. “Slow down. Breathe. What about Nii?”

Granted, Nii all by himself was enough reason to panic. Man or woman. The guy was slimy. And every member of security was specifically ordered _not_ to kill him.

 _Damn it_.

“In what Kou was working on,” Yaone got out. “The ones you got me just before his access closed down. I don’t think he saw all of it, he didn’t have time - and I used your black key sweeper, I _had_ to, I don’t know everything the program vacuumed up but the data I saw-!” She shuddered, shoving a tablet at him as if it burned her. “Fourth video. Oh god.”

Yaone had used his last-ditch info-grabber? Sweet little Yaone, who played with Lirin like a big sister and had survived all Kou’s paranoid vetting with a smile and ‘of course a big brother worries’?

 _This is bad_.

Then he played the video, and knew it was worse.

 _It’s a monster_.

Tentacles. Skin that shifted like the best cammo-armor. _Teeth_.

And from the framing data around the video, this was just one of Nii’s specimens. Specimens he was letting attack people, on-screen, who after the time lapse went feverish and rabid, tearing through everything short of steel restraints.

_What the hell’s going on?_

“The key grabbed a sort being run on company personnel’s DNA registry,” Yaone said in a small voice. “By Nii.” She gulped. “We were both listed. And... so was Kou.”

 _And Kou’s missing_.

“Oh, screw this.” Dokugakuji glanced over his shoulder out of habit, then fiddled under his desk for the secret drawer of the rest of the program tools he wasn’t supposed to have. “Tell me you didn’t get a pet recently.”

“Er, well, no.” A finger found long dark hair, curled nervously in it. “Unless you count my aloe plant-”

“It’ll have to live or die without you,” he shrugged, slamming the little drive home. “We’re finding Kou. And then we’re taking a little unscheduled vacation.”

“But we’ve been looking for him for three days!” Yaone glanced at the door, as if expecting the attack ninjas to cut through any second.

 _They’d probably come through the wall. Easier access_ , Dokugakuji thought wryly, as his vicious little program started burrowing into the building’s datastreams. “Yeah, but I wasn’t looking for where Nii’s looking.”

_Labs, more labs, utility closet - oh I am never touching that janitor’s bucket again - whoa, wait-!_

“Lirin!” Yaone made an aborted grab at the screen; yanked her hands back, and took a deliberate breath. “What’s she doing on the maintenance level?”

That was the kid, sure enough; arms full of a bundle of cloth, wide green eyes sweeping over half-wrecked drones, shelves of parts, stray tools left on workbenches, something oddly gold-

Yaone leaned forward, intent as she’d be on a new plant leaf. “What is that?”

“I don’t know,” Dokugakuji scowled. “But we both know Kou hates drones, so....”

“This is the place to look,” Yaone finished, watching over his shoulder as he opened one of the _serious_ arms closets. “You... don’t really think we’re going to need those, do you? I mean, Lady Gyokumen let Lirin go in there....”

Getting out yet another magazine, Dokugakuji raised an eyebrow.

“Right.” The biochemist straightened. “Give me the taser.”

* * *

The silver on his wrists was singing.

_Where am I?_

And why couldn’t he even blink?

 _Stuck in... something_. Kougaiji connected that thought, and Nii, and tried not to shudder in utter, squeamish horror. Throwing up while something was stuck over his mouth could kill him.

Not that it felt like he had anything to throw up. Which might explain part of how fuzzy everything was. He’d never been quite ready to face the world without at least a hunk of cheese to gnaw on in the morning-

 _What was_ that?

He’d tried a tentative wriggle, to see how tight he was held, and... it was so odd. Like listening to echoes in an auditorium, and realizing he could estimate where the walls were even with his eyes closed.

_But it wasn’t a sound!_

More - feeling without touching. Which made no _sense_. If he couldn’t touch it, how could he feel solid metal walls, less-solid wood and plastic shelving, the vaporous presence of air, shifting with exhaled warmth....

 _Warmth I can’t feel. I’m sensing energy_.

His kami bangles were singing with it, alive; _here, here, this is where-we-are!_

Which fit right into what he’d pieced together about kami; the jewelry was _technology_ , not just fancy ornaments. If you were going to be flinging yourself blindly through space, one of the first things you’d want was a stabilizer-

Living energy, moving upright on two legs.

_Move!_

Whatever held him crumbled like dried mud. Kougaiji tried to turn it into a controlled fall, landing on the opposite side of some kind of workbench from whatever threat might be-

“...Nii-san?”

Lirin. That was Lirin’s voice. Lirin’s green eyes, staring past an armful of dark clothing way too big to be hers. Lirin’s scent, soft red hair and chocolate and soap from her latest scrubbing-

: _Vulnerable cub, seize, Turn, ours-!_ :

He punched the wall instead.

 _Hurts. But not enough._ Which was crazy; he should have broken his hand, not just dented a metal wall. _Damn you, Nii! When I get my hands on you, I’m going to gut you down to the spine!_

Not the kind of gory image he wanted to have in his head. But imagining blood with Nii’s face was so, so much safer than the _warmth_ inside him. A queer, soft-edged anger that someone had sent Lirin down here into life-threatening danger; of _course_ he should pick her up and cuddle her under his chin and so lightly, lightly scratch....

: _Cub, ours, protect-!_ :

 _No!_ “Lirin. Stay... stay over there.” He wanted to yell; wanted to scream. But he couldn’t. That would hurt Lirin - and he would not hurt-

: _Cub. Ours_.:

-His _sister_. His human sister. Who was going to stay human, damn Nii and his experiments to the deepest hells.

Wide green blinked, and Lirin shoved the clothes up onto the bench between them. “Why? What’s wrong? Nii-san’s all tigery.”

 _Tiger-?_ Kougaiji looked at his own arms, and had to blink himself. His usual tan had darkened, streaked with wavy diagonal stripes of crimson. Though not nearly as dark and obvious a red as the stripes on his-

Instinct wrapped his arms around himself; wrapping furry muscle just as tightly. _Oh gods. Nii... Koushu_....

One or both of them had left Lirin here. He’d kill them for that-

: _Cub? Doing what?_ :

Moving around the table toward him, of course, Lirin wasn’t afraid of him, damn it- “Wait! I’m not decent!”

Lirin’s eyes bugged, and she scurried back around the other side like her hair was on fire. “Nii-san! That’s not nice. Lirin was worried! Lirin’s been looking everywhere!”

A shower would have been good. Going back to bed and finding out this was nothing but a bad dream, even better. Kougaiji grabbed for black scraps of decency, and prayed the day wouldn’t get worse.

 _Who am I kidding? Nii’s involved. It_ will _get worse_.

Pulling on his pants, Kougaiji tried to rein in his temper. He’d never wanted to break someone’s bones one by one before. But putting on sandals that might as well have been meant to leave toe-claws in plain view, and a shirt and jacket cut short enough the tentacles could swarm free-

 _Nii knew. He knew exactly what would happen_. “Lirin. Have you had any shots?”

“Eep!” Lirin gave him a squinty-eyed look. “That’s really not nice! Lirin went to the doctor before Nii-san went offworld, and Lirin’s not going again unless someone drags her! Nyah!”

Kougaiji blinked at the tongue she’d stuck out, and stifled a giggle. _She’s okay. She’s really okay. Thank the gods_.

: _Safe for_ now, _not later_ -:

Her grin and faint : _happy_ : was his only warning. Lirin’d taken to some of Dokugakuji’s lessons right along with him, and she hurled herself over the table like a redheaded missile.

_No! I won’t-!_

He caught her. Claws just resting on fragile skin. Close. Too close.

Lirin squirmed in his hold to hug him, leaning mostly on the jacket. “Nii-san needs a bath.”

“A long, hot one,” Kougaiji agreed, letting her tuck her head under his chin. It felt right. Protective. And if he was already protecting her, then he didn’t have to- to-

 _I didn’t claw her. I didn’t_.

But he still _wanted_ to. It was terrifying.

“Why aren’t you scared?” Kougaiji whispered. “Your brother’s scared.”

Lirin shivered, and curled deeper into his chest. “Nii-san’s not scary. Mother... Mother is scary.”

Well. And how could he argue with that?

 _Focus_ , Kougaiji told himself. _If they put Lirin in here they knew I was waking up. Which means we don’t have much time_. “I need you to listen, very carefully. We need to get out of here. Dr. Nii... he gave me a shot, and - this happened. I _won’t_ let it happen to you-”

Across the room, the door opened.

* * *

_Vid feeds looped, we’re armed, Lirin’s definitely in here_....

Dokugakuji eased the door open onto shadows, hoping not to startle the kid. Though if it was a choice between that and shooting whatever might have her-

Behind him, Yaone stifled a squeak.

For a heartbeat Dokugakuji almost squeaked himself. _Finger_ off _trigger secondary principal in the way what the hell is that-?_

Slit violet eyes were angry; clawed hands trying - to pry the kid loose? “Lirin, get behind me!”

“No!” Lirin glared at the both of them. “Don’t you hurt Nii-san!”

“Kou?” Dokugakuji said in disbelief, as Yaone started breathing again. “Kou, is that _you?_ ”

His primary principal shuddered, stripes and all. “If Nii comes near you with a needle, _kill him_.” Violet narrowed. “Then again. Forget the needle. Do the universe a favor.”

That sounded like Kou. Even with the... tentacles. Good _night_.

“ _This_ is why Nii’s analyzing Personnel’s DNA records?” Yaone stood straighter than he’d ever seen her, eyes flashing. “We need to warn people!”

“Take Lirin,” Kou directed her; moving smooth and careful to pass the stubborn brat into Yaone’s arms, the most unthreatening body language Dokugakuji had ever seen him pull off. Might have even convinced him, without the claws. “You need to get her out of here. Nii, Koushu - someone left her in here with me, expecting I’d wake up and....” He shuddered again, _I want to kill something_ written in every ripple of skin.

“Infect her,” Dokugakuji said flatly. Still having a hard time believing it. It sounded like something off the bad SF holo-channels.

 _But that’s Kou. I’d stake my life on it_.

“Yes.” Violet found his gaze, grim. “Doku. Get her out of here.”

 _And leave you with Nii? I don’t think so_. “We’re _all_ getting out of here.”

“No!” Kou snapped. “I won’t risk it!”

“Nooo!” Lirin was fighting Yaone’s grasp, half a breath away from biting. “Lirin’s going to stay with Nii-san!”

“We’re all going with your Nii-san,” Yaone told her. “Kou, think! If this is a virus, we need to make a vaccine; and you’re _sane_. We need you!”

“And we do not have time to argue about this, sir,” Dokugakuji said bluntly. “If Nii and Lady Koushu are both mixed up in this, my hack on the security systems isn’t going to last-”

Alarms howled.

* * *

Later, Yaone would never remember exactly how they’d gotten off the maintenance level. There was running and screaming and Dokugakuji shooting at people. Lirin clung to her like a limpet, as Yaone tased one determined guard who got past Kougaiji’s claws. Mostly because Lirin’s brother didn’t want to _use_ those claws.

Yaone had seen the videos; bodies twisting, rabid, minds gone. She didn’t want to see it for real.

Not that Kougaiji was shy of using every other resource he had, with Lirin’s life on the line. Anyone that came within reach of tiger-striped tentacles... didn’t get up again.

She might have been more terrified of that, if the narrow crease between Dokugakuji’s eyes hadn’t worried her so much.

“Find whoever altered the floorplan and hurt them,” the security officer growled. “Kou, they’re herding us!”

Clutching Lirin, Yaone gulped. _Why would they do_ -

Another door banged open, and they were in an echoing hall; from the mass-produced chairs and wooden podium, probably somewhere meant for upper management to lecture the techs who kept things running.

...If those waving tentacles were the techs, she needed to send management a _strongly worded memo_. Delivered by flamethrower.

“Akuma,” Yaone managed, trying to scrabble backward as Kou put himself between his sister and monsters. “Only they’re not even humanoid, oh god-”

Doku glanced behind her, blanched, and yanked her back around into the room. “Incoming!”

 _They look like Kou_ , Yaone thought, in that instant of terrified clarity. _Maybe we can talk_ -

_“Prey!”_

“Eat lead!” Dokugakuji snarled, opening up on the snarling horde with everything he had left.

Yaone stumbled, almost running into Kou’s back as he tensed, staring down... whatever passed for eyes on the writhing creatures slithering forward. His claws clenched and loosened, obvious threat; his tentacles were spread in front of both of them like a razor-hooked barrier.

The tentacle-nests halted. Shifting, as if judging their chances.

Behind them, Doku jammed in another magazine. “There’s too many of them!”

“I know,” Kou said softly. “I won’t let them take you.”

Yaone tried not to whimper. She didn’t want to die. But the thought of becoming one of those - things....

“Nii-san!” Lirin’s voice was shaking. “Lirin wants to go home!”

“I want to go home, too-” Kou drew in a quick breath, backing up to wrap a tentacle around them both. “Doku! Grab onto me!”

Doku picked off another shot, teeth gritted as some of his last targets started getting back up. “Love you too, brother, but now’s not the time-”

Kou was backing closer, teeth bared in a manic researcher’s smile. “Relax! I might just kill us.”

“What?” Yaone croaked, hearing silver chime as Kougaiji raised his arms. “What are you going to-”

The world went white, then black, then _gone_.

* * *

_We-are-here, we-exist_....

Kougaiji centered himself in the chiming, using _we-are_ to anchor himself against the winds that wanted to tear them to dust in the corners of the universe. They existed, they were four living minds, they only needed to shift the world from here to - _there_.

Sound and light and solidity came back, in a thump of bodies on a hard wood floor.

Crouched on a familiar stain Doku’d never quite managed to get out of the cabin planks, Kougaiji took a moment to just breathe. They were out. He couldn’t quite believe they were here, in the little hideaway stash Dokugakuji kept for paranoid emergencies, but they were _out_.

 _Oh my head_....

“On the up side, proof that these are stabilizers, confirmed,” Kougaiji rasped out. “Publishing the findings is going to be hell.... Everyone alright?”

No answer. Though his ears caught a whimper, like Lirin was running from monsters in her sleep.

_No, no, no, they have to be okay-!_

Fingertips found pulses, as he checked the unconscious bodies sprawled around him. They were warm, they were steady....

: _Step-shock. Pack will be well_.:

It wasn’t a voice, exactly. More a _knowing_ , sure and steady as his own hearts’ beat. These were : _those-who-could-be-pack_ :. He wouldn’t harm them. He’d done everything he could _not_ to harm them, taking the brunt of the winds-between on himself. Hence the headache.

“They’re human,” Kougaiji snarled. “They’re my friends, my sister-!”

A blaze of rage, giving him the strength to stand. : _Not-pack almost scratched them!_ :

He... couldn’t argue with that. It terrified him, but it was true. Those monsters had been so _close_.

 _But I won’t. I won’t. Who knows if I’ll turn into that? It - it might just be a matter of time_.

Kougaiji massaged his headache with his fingertips, oddly bemused how easy it was to pull the claws in and not scratch himself. “Stop. Think. Yaone got files. I’m Father’s heir; Koushu can’t work around that in a hurry. She had to think I’d come out of this... somewhat sane. And Nii wouldn’t just inject me without some kind of information on the outcome. His ego’s too big for that.” Press and rub, some of the pain fading with each push. “I need to read the files. I need to wake them up.”

For more reasons than just his own peace of mind, Kougaiji thought, sitting Dokugakuji up first. Nii would be _looking_ for them.

 _And if he’s not... Koushu will_.

* * *

“Well.” Nii lit a cigarette, and drew in silvery smoke. “That went well.”

“Went _well?_ ” Gyokumen Koushu’s painted nails dug into his labcoat, not quite cutting through the body armor underneath. “He took my daughter!”

“And two other vulnerable genotypes,” Nii mused, knowing it would annoy her further. Koushu never let go of what was _hers_. Her lover. Her research. Her daughter. “Interesting.” He blew smoke almost in her face. “He’s conscious, he’s sane - and now we know for certain that youkai _can_ access kami tech.” He smirked. “I’d call this a successful test.”

Her nails tightened. “I want Lirin found!”

“Oh, we will, we will,” Nii said confidently. “But you can be patient a day or two, right? It’d be _so_ much more convenient for testing viral transmission in the field.”

She released him, taking one thoughtful step back. “He cares about Lirin. And that idiot bodyguard.”

“Of course he does. That’s what makes this perfect. He’s youkai. Like you are, beautiful lady. With three people he knows are going to be the prey of... monsters.” Nii let his grin widen. “I wonder how long he can resist?”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The Abhayamudrā “gesture of fearlessness” is meant to project reassurance and safety, dispel fear, and accord divine protection and bliss. The right hand is held upright, and the palm is facing outwards.
> 
> …Though I suspect in Sanzo’s case, it’s less “reassurance and safety”, than _“Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil – for I am the meanest S.O.B. in the whole damn Valley.”_
> 
> And yes, the akuma are not infectious the exact same way as Hollows are. The Arrancar race has _ethnicities,_ and different groups have different approaches to their virus. *EG*


End file.
